Re: Field name from "this"

From:
Thomas Hawtin <usenet@tackline.plus.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:25:15 +0100
Message-ID:
<45365535$0$8711$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net>
G. Ralph Kuntz, MD wrote:

I am trying to find a way to get a field's name (variable name) given a
pointer to "this".

I am trying to log all user actions in an application. In every case
where a JButton appears in my app, I use a subclass:

JButton aButton = new MyButton();

I can modify the constructor for MyButton to automatically log when the
button is clicked by adding an ActionListener. I would like to print
the class of the containing window (JDialog or JFrame) and the variable
name of the button. This way I can recreate what the user clicked.

I realize that I could use getClass().getFields() and loop thought the
Field[] until I find "this" then use Field.getName(), but I was hoping
for a faster way (less impact on performance).


Is such a loop going to take significantly long compared with the rest
of the action?

If you are sufficiently twisted, from within the constructor of MyButton
you can get the stack trace. Later, at button click time, the stack
trace can be used to find the source of the code that created the
button. Cameron Purdy presented a similar icky piece of code in his weblog:

http://www.jroller.com/page/cpurdy?entry=yaul_trac

Tom Hawtin

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