Question

Is there some way through the standard library or some already existing library to determine the degree of relation between two classes/interfaces in Java?

Let’s say I have an object and a list of classes/interfaces. Now I basically want to know the one class of that list, that has the shortest inheritance-tree path to this object.

I already looked through the java.lang.reflect package and Class, but couldn’t really find anything that would allow easy access to information like this. Is that perhaps already part of another library?

Answer 1

I don’t know anything ready to use.

I would use Reflection to discover the relationships.

The hard part is the shortest-path.

• You have to define what exactly you want :

  • For example, do you search superclasses first and then interfaces ?
  • What do you decide when several have the same length of path ?
    Use alphabetical order ?
    Use the order of discovery (which is random) ? …

• Then, look for these classes or interfaces in that order, starting with the current class, then it’s parent class (and possibly implemented interfaces), and so on…