Java Reflection Performance

Question

Does creating an object using reflection rather than calling the class constructor result in any significant performance differences?

Answer 1

Yes there is a performance hit when using Reflection but a possible workaround for optimization is caching the method:

  Method md = null;     // Call while looking up the method at each iteration.
      millis = System.currentTimeMillis( );
      for (idx = 0; idx < CALL_AMOUNT; idx++) {
        md = ri.getClass( ).getMethod("getValue", null);
        md.invoke(ri, null);
      }

      System.out.println("Calling method " + CALL_AMOUNT+ " times reflexively with lookup took " + (System.currentTimeMillis( ) - millis) + " millis");



      // Call using a cache of the method.

      md = ri.getClass( ).getMethod("getValue", null);
      millis = System.currentTimeMillis( );
      for (idx = 0; idx < CALL_AMOUNT; idx++) {
        md.invoke(ri, null);
      }
      System.out.println("Calling method " + CALL_AMOUNT + " times reflexively with cache took " + (System.currentTimeMillis( ) - millis) + " millis");

will result in:

[java] Calling method 1000000 times reflexively with lookup took 5618 millis

[java] Calling method 1000000 times reflexively with cache took 270 millis