Re: Recursive Field Check by Reflection

From:
Eric Sosman <Eric.Sosman@sun.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:01:05 -0400
Message-ID:
<1220454003.628493@news1nwk>
David wrote:

Hi,

I am looking for a piece of code to do the following:

Getting an object and a field name as a parameter, the code will check
the object fields (including the object's ancestors fields)
recursively to find out if the fields named "X" are null (or any other
given value).

Anybody has an idea where to look for?


     Just typed in and not tested:

    static boolean isFieldNull(Object obj, String name)
        throws Throwable // you could be more specific here
    {
        Class clown = obj.getClass();
        Field field = clown.getDeclaredField(name);
        Object value = field.get(obj);
        return value == null;
    }

     Checking for "any other given value" could be a bit more laborious,
depending on how much you can assume about the type of that value.
Access restrictions could bollix things, as could security managers
and/or multiple class loaders.

     Off-hand I'm not sure whether getDeclaredField() will find fields
that are inherited from superclasses; I think it will but you should
check. If you're worried about a subclass' field "hiding" a superclass'
field of the same name, I guess you could use getSuperclass() on the
Class object to walk up the inheritance tree.

--
Eric.Sosman@sun.com

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