What is reflection and why is it useful?

Question

What is reflection, and why is it useful?

I\'m particularly interested in Java, but I assume the principles are the same in any language.

Answer 1

Reflection is a language's ability to inspect and dynamically call classes, methods, attributes, etc. at runtime.

For example, all objects in Java have the method getClass(), which lets you determine the object's class even if you don't know it at compile time (e.g. if you declared it as an Object) - this might seem trivial, but such reflection is not possible in less dynamic languages such as C++. More advanced uses lets you list and call methods, constructors, etc.

Reflection is important since it lets you write programs that do not have to "know" everything at compile time, making them more dynamic, since they can be tied together at runtime. The code can be written against known interfaces, but the actual classes to be used can be instantiated using reflection from configuration files.

Lots of modern frameworks use reflection extensively for this very reason. Most other modern languages use reflection as well, and in scripting languages (such as Python) they are even more tightly integrated, since it feels more natural within the general programming model of those languages.