New instance of class based on argument

Question

I\'m trying to make a function that takes one of many classes that extends Foo, and return a new instance of that object in its Class, not a new instance of F

Answer 1

You can use Java's reflection here.

If you want to get a Class by just its classname, you use Class.forName:

Class type = Class.forName('package.SomeClass');

You can check if this class is Foo or a subclass of it:

boolean isFoo = type.isAssignableFrom(Foo.class);

You can then create a new instance very easily (assuming the constructor takes no arguments):

Object instance = type.newInstance();