Get generic type of class at runtime

Question

How can I achieve this?

public class GenericClass
{
    public Type getMyType()
    {
        //How do I return the type of T?
    }
}

Answer 1

Sure, you can.

Java does not use the information at run time, for backwards compatibility reasons. But the information is actually present as metadata and can be accessed via reflection (but it is still not used for type-checking).

From the official API:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/reflect/ParameterizedType.html#getActualTypeArguments%28%29

However, for your scenario I would not use reflection. I'm personally more inclined to use that for framework code. In your case I would just add the type as a constructor param.