At runtime, find all classes in a Java application that extend a base class

Question

I want to do something like this:

List animals = new ArrayList();

for( Class c: list_of_all_classes_available_to_my_app() )
   i         


        

Answer 1

Think about this from an aspect-oriented point of view; what you want to do, really, is know all the classes at runtime that HAVE extended the Animal class. (I think that's a slightly more accurate description of your problem than your title; otherwise, I don't think you have a runtime question.)

So what I think you want is to create a constructor of your base class (Animal) which adds to your static array (I prefer ArrayLists, myself, but to each their own) the type of the current Class which is being instantiated.

So, roughly;

public abstract class Animal
    {
    private static ArrayList<Class> instantiatedDerivedTypes;
    public Animal() {
        Class derivedClass = this.getClass();
        if (!instantiatedDerivedClass.contains(derivedClass)) {
            instantiatedDerivedClass.Add(derivedClass);
        }
    }

Of course, you'll need a static constructor on Animal to initialize instantiatedDerivedClass... I think this'll do what you probably want. Note that this is execution-path dependent; if you have a Dog class that derives from Animal that never gets invoked, you won't have it in your Animal Class list.

Answer 2

This is a tough problem and you will need to find out this information using static analysis, its not available easily at runtime. Basically get the classpath of your app and scan through the available classes and read the bytecode information of a class which class it inherits from. Note that a class Dog may not directly inherit from Animal but might inherit from Pet which is turn inherits from Animal,so you will need to keep track of that hierarchy.

Answer 3

Thanks all who answered this question.

It seems this is indeed a tough nut to crack. I ended up giving up and creating a static array and getter in my baseclass.

public abstract class Animal{
    private static Animal[] animals= null;
    public static Animal[] getAnimals(){
        if (animals==null){
            animals = new Animal[]{
                new Dog(),
                new Cat(),
                new Lion()
            };
        }
        return animals;
    }
}

It seems that Java just isn't set up for self-discoverability the way C# is. I suppose the problem is that since a Java app is just a collection of .class files out in a directory / jar file somewhere, the runtime doesn't know about a class until it's referenced. At that time the loader loads it -- what I'm trying to do is discover it before I reference it which is not possible without going out to the file system and looking.

I always like code that can discover itself instead of me having to tell it about itself, but alas this works too.

Thanks again!

Answer 4

Java dynamically loads classes, so your universe of classes would be only those that have already been loaded (and not yet unloaded). Perhaps you can do something with a custom class loader that could check the supertypes of each loaded class. I don't think there's an API to query the set of loaded classes.

Answer 5

I use org.reflections:

Reflections reflections = new Reflections("com.mycompany");    
Set<Class<? extends MyInterface>> classes = reflections.getSubTypesOf(MyInterface.class);

Another example:

public static void main(String[] args) throws IllegalAccessException, InstantiationException {
    Reflections reflections = new Reflections("java.util");
    Set<Class<? extends List>> classes = reflections.getSubTypesOf(java.util.List.class);
    for (Class<? extends List> aClass : classes) {
        System.out.println(aClass.getName());
        if(aClass == ArrayList.class) {
            List list = aClass.newInstance();
            list.add("test");
            System.out.println(list.getClass().getName() + ": " + list.size());
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

The most robust mechanism for listing all subclasses of a given class is currently ClassGraph, because it handles the widest possible array of classpath specification mechanisms, including the new JPMS module system. (I am the author.)

List<Class<Animal>> animals;
try (ScanResult scanResult = new ClassGraph().whitelistPackages("com.zoo.animals")
        .enableClassInfo().scan()) {
    animals = scanResult
        .getSubclasses(Animal.class.getName())
        .loadClasses(Animal.class);
}