Re: Reflection: Instantiate All Classes in a Package?

From:

Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@epenguin.zzn.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:14:33 GMT

Message-ID:

<Zu9Nh.995$5E3.404@trndny01>

Chris Uppal wrote:

Mark Rafn wrote:

Oliver Wong <owong@castortech.com> wrote:

Actually, the answer turned out to be "yes" (though I can't find the
thread where we concluded this)

Um, no. The answer turned out to be "No"

No, /that/ conversation concluded -- correctly -- that the answer is "yes".
It is trivial, albeit a little slow, to probe a classloader for all the
possible potential names of classes -- see the link in Oliver's follow-up post
for details and further speculation.

-- chris

When I said that the answer is "no", I meant that purely using
reflection, i.e. stock java.lang.reflect.*/ClassLoader, this could not
be done. Through writing custom ClassLoaders or (my preference), parsing
the class path/bootstrap path/extensions directory, one can obtain the
needed classes.

The OP originally asked for the answer using /reflection/ -- he was more
or less asking if the answer could there was a method along the lines of
getAllClasses(String package).

In summary: Yes, one can get a list of classes in a certain package
through various means, but no, it cannot be done through /pure/
reflection. Happy now?