How to read the value of a private field from a different class in Java?

Question

I have a poorly designed class in a 3rd-party JAR and I need to access one of its private fields. For example, why should I need to choose priv

Answer 1

You need to do the following:

private static Field getField(Class cls, String fieldName) {
    for (Class c = cls; c != null; c = c.getSuperclass()) {
        try {
            final Field field = c.getDeclaredField(fieldName);
            field.setAccessible(true);
            return field;
        } catch (final NoSuchFieldException e) {
            // Try parent
        } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException(
                    "Cannot access field " + cls.getName() + "." + fieldName, e);
        }
    }
    throw new IllegalArgumentException(
            "Cannot find field " + cls.getName() + "." + fieldName);
}