Can you find all classes in a package using reflection?

Question

Is it possible to find all classes or interfaces in a given package? (Quickly looking at e.g. Package, it would seem like no.)

Answer 1

You could use this method¹ that uses the ClassLoader.

/**
 * Scans all classes accessible from the context class loader which belong to the given package and subpackages.
 *
 * @param packageName The base package
 * @return The classes
 * @throws ClassNotFoundException
 * @throws IOException
 */
private static Class[] getClasses(String packageName)
        throws ClassNotFoundException, IOException {
    ClassLoader classLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
    assert classLoader != null;
    String path = packageName.replace('.', '/');
    Enumeration resources = classLoader.getResources(path);
    List dirs = new ArrayList();
    while (resources.hasMoreElements()) {
        URL resource = resources.nextElement();
        dirs.add(new File(resource.getFile()));
    }
    ArrayList classes = new ArrayList();
    for (File directory : dirs) {
        classes.addAll(findClasses(directory, packageName));
    }
    return classes.toArray(new Class[classes.size()]);
}

/**
 * Recursive method used to find all classes in a given directory and subdirs.
 *
 * @param directory   The base directory
 * @param packageName The package name for classes found inside the base directory
 * @return The classes
 * @throws ClassNotFoundException
 */
private static List findClasses(File directory, String packageName) throws ClassNotFoundException {
    List classes = new ArrayList();
    if (!directory.exists()) {
        return classes;
    }
    File[] files = directory.listFiles();
    for (File file : files) {
        if (file.isDirectory()) {
            assert !file.getName().contains(".");
            classes.addAll(findClasses(file, packageName + "." + file.getName()));
        } else if (file.getName().endsWith(".class")) {
            classes.add(Class.forName(packageName + '.' + file.getName().substring(0, file.getName().length() - 6)));
        }
    }
    return classes;
}

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_{¹ This method was taken originally from http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/4831, which was archived by the Internet Archive, as linked to now. The snippet is also available at https://dzone.com/articles/get-all-classes-within-package.}