How to call static method from a generic class?

Question

I have a class containing a static create method.

public class TestClass {

 public static  TestClass create() {
    return new TestClass&l         


        

Answer 1

Assuming you are asking about specifying the type explicitly in case type inference fails, you can use TestClass.<String>create() (notice how the type is after the . as opposed to before).

Answer 2

The generic type can be specified in the class declaration:

public class TestClass<E> {

    public static <E> TestClass<E> create() {
        return new TestClass<E>();
    }
}

// Elsewhere in the code
TestClass<String> testClass = TestClass.create();

Answer 3

Yeah, that's pretty... unintuitive.

A sidenote from Josh Bloch's presentation of his Effective Java, 2nd Edition about the issue: "God kills a kitten every time you specify an explicit type parameter". I would like to avoid constructs like this but sometimes it cannot be evaded.

The trick is to specify the generic parameter after the . character: TestClass.<String>create().