Question

I want to use the class information that was captured by the setup of a generic method in Java to potentially create an instance. But I can’t see how to reference the class without an actual instance. Is it possible?

public class Fancy {

static public <TypeToFind> TypeToFind createInSomeCase() {
  // any type of logic with TypeToFind "class" generic will do, I just want to reference it.

  // the below code is invalid, I could also declare a variable, but can't always create an instance to get the class
  if (TypeToFind.getClass().equals(Something.class)) {
    return TypeToFind.getInstance();
  }
}


}

… so later on I could do:

TheResultIsTheParameter t = Fancy.createInSomeCase();

… instead of

TheResultIsAParameter t = Fancy.createInSomeCase(TheResultIsAParameter.class);

… or

TheResultIsAParameter t = Fancy.createInSomeCase(t);

Am I making this too complicated?

Answer 1

You can’t do it, because generics are lost at runtime (due to type erasure). You have to pass a Class<?> parameter