Return class by name

[dutchgold92]

Say I have a program which declares an object of type Animal. The Animal class is an abstract class, which has subclasses including Pig, Dog and Sheep.
What I want to do is dynamically assign the Animal instance to one of its subclasses, given just the name of the subclass.

I've been trying things like this, which don't work:

Animal animal;
animal = Class.forName("Pig");

[Tolls]

"which don't work" gives us next to no useful information.
What errors or excceptions do you get?

[dutchgold92]

Type mismatch: cannot convert from Class<capture#1-of ?> to Animal

[DarrylBurke]

What made you think that Class.forName(...) would return an instance of a class? have you read the API for java.lang.Class?

db

[dutchgold92]

What made you think that Class.forName(...) would return an instance of a class? have you read the API for java.lang.Class?

db

Yes, with the newInstance() method?

[JosAH]

Yes, with the newInstance() method?

Yep, but that's something entirely different. A Class (with a capital C) object represents a class (with a lowercase c), but it isn't an instantiation of that class (with a lowecase c again). Instead it is an instantiation of the Class class.

kind regards,

Jos

[jlczuk]

What about checking the type using instanceof?

Animal a = methodReturningRandomSubclassInstanceOfAnimal();

if (a instanceof Lion)  {
  // It's a Lion instance
}