Question

Would what be a static equivalent of a dynamic

String CLASS_NAME = this.getClass().getCanonicalName()

Note that the following is not what i’m looking for since it specifically refers to a particular class. I’d like to refer to class name outside of a method (ie in the static {} section)

static String CLASS_NAME = Foo.class.getCanonicalName()

THanks.

Answer 1

I think what you’re trying to do is this:

public static <T> String getCanonicalName() {
    return T.class.getCanonicalName();
}

But I’m sure that you’ve already figured out that this does not work. This is because Java generics rely on type erasure. That is, T only exists at compile time. At run time, T is no longer accessible.

To do this generically, you must use an instance of the type as you did in your first example.

Edit

After realizing the true nature of your question, I do not come bearing a direct answer.

I have seen certain “hacks” like the following

static String ClassName = Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace[0].getClassName();

This gets the name of the class, but I’m pretty sure it will not be the same as that returned by getCanonicalName(), and I really don’t know of a way to transform the output of getClassName() into the output of getCanonicalName().

I think it there are is a change to the Java language that would have really helped developers write intuitive code: if some sort of self keyword to could be added refer to the current class it would simplify any scenario like yours, by allowing you to write things like self.class.getCanonicalName(). But, as things stand, we don’t have that, so what you’d like to do isn’t directly possible.

There are other possible workarounds. For example, you can try something like:

 static String ClassName = null;

 public Foo() {
     if(ClassName == null)
         ClassName = this.getClass().getCanonicalName();
 }

But that requires your class to be constructible, which is not always desirable. It’s also not nearly as straightforward as it could be if we had a self keyword.