How do I invoke a Java method when given the method name as a string?

Question

If I have two variables:

Object obj;
String methodName = \"getName\";

Without knowing the class of obj, how can I call the met

Answer 1

Method method = someVariable.class.getMethod(SomeClass);
String status = (String) method.invoke(method);

SomeClass is the class and someVariable is a variable.

Answer 2

The method can be invoked like this. There are also more possibilities (check the reflection api), but this is the simplest one:

import java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;

import org.junit.Assert;
import org.junit.Test;

public class ReflectionTest {

    private String methodName = "length";
    private String valueObject = "Some object";

    @Test
    public void testGetMethod() throws SecurityException, NoSuchMethodException, IllegalArgumentException,
            IllegalAccessException, InvocationTargetException {
        Method m = valueObject.getClass().getMethod(methodName, new Class[] {});
        Object ret = m.invoke(valueObject, new Object[] {});
        Assert.assertEquals(11, ret);
    }



}

Answer 3

This is working fine for me :

public class MethodInvokerClass {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws NoSuchMethodException, SecurityException, IllegalAccessException, IllegalArgumentException, ClassNotFoundException, InvocationTargetException, InstantiationException {
        Class c = Class.forName(MethodInvokerClass.class.getName());
        Object o = c.newInstance();
        Class[] paramTypes = new Class[1];
        paramTypes[0]=String.class;
        String methodName = "countWord";
         Method m = c.getDeclaredMethod(methodName, paramTypes);
         m.invoke(o, "testparam");
}
public void countWord(String input){
    System.out.println("My input "+input);
}

}

Output:

My input testparam

I am able to invoke the method by passing its name to another method (like main).