Question

There is a non public api that I need to override in order to workaround a quirk with Android’s WebView.

The api is hidden but it is public:

/**
 * ...
 *
 * @hide pending API council approval
 */
public boolean selectText() {
    ...
}

So I can override it by simply declaring it in my own WebView class, minus the @Override:

public boolean selectText() {
    ...
}

Is it possible to call the super method from my override? Normally I could write:

public boolean selectText() {
    return super.selectText();
}

But the method is hidden, so super.selectText() is not available. If I use reflection:

public boolean selectText() {
    return (Boolean) WebView.class.getMethod("selectText").invoke(this, (Object[]) null);
}

I get an infinite loop because it calls my overridden method.

Is there anyway to override this method AND be able to call the super method?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Is there anyway to override this method AND be able to call the super
method?

No, unfortunately, as is explained in the answer to the question How to call a superclass method using Java reflection you cannot solve this problem with reflection.