Way to make Java parent class method return object of child class

Question

Is there any elegant way to make Java method located within parent class return object of child class, when this method is called from child class object?

I want to

Answer 1

You can call this.getClass() to get the runtime class.

However, this is not necessarily the class that called the method (it could be even further down the hierarchy).

And you would need to use reflection to create new instances, which is tricky, because you do not know what kind of constructors the child class has.

return this.getClass().newInstance(); // sometimes works