Determining the extended interfaces of a Class

Question

I need to determine if a Class object representing an interface extends another interface, ie:

 package a.b.c.d;
    public Interface IMyInterface extends a.b.d.c.ISomeOtherInterface{
    }

according to the spec Class.getSuperClass() will return null for an Interface.

If this Class represents either the Object class, an interface, a primitive type, or void, then null is returned.

Therefore the following won't work.

Class interface = Class.ForName("a.b.c.d.IMyInterface")
Class extendedInterface = interface.getSuperClass();
if(extendedInterface.getName().equals("a.b.d.c.ISomeOtherInterface")){
    //do whatever here
}

any ideas?

Answer 1

Use Class.getInterfaces such as:

Class<?> c; // Your class
for(Class<?> i : c.getInterfaces()) {
     // test if i is your interface
}

Also the following code might be of help, it will give you a set with all super-classes and interfaces of a certain class:

public static Set<Class<?>> getInheritance(Class<?> in)
{
 LinkedHashSet<Class<?>> result = new LinkedHashSet<Class<?>>();

 result.add(in);
 getInheritance(in, result);

 return result;
}

/**
 * Get inheritance of type.
 * 
 * @param in
 * @param result
 */
private static void getInheritance(Class<?> in, Set<Class<?>> result)
{
 Class<?> superclass = getSuperclass(in);

 if(superclass != null)
 {
  result.add(superclass);
  getInheritance(superclass, result);
 }

 getInterfaceInheritance(in, result);
}

/**
 * Get interfaces that the type inherits from.
 * 
 * @param in
 * @param result
 */
private static void getInterfaceInheritance(Class<?> in, Set<Class<?>> result)
{
 for(Class<?> c : in.getInterfaces())
 {
  result.add(c);

  getInterfaceInheritance(c, result);
 }
}

/**
 * Get superclass of class.
 * 
 * @param in
 * @return
 */
private static Class<?> getSuperclass(Class<?> in)
{
 if(in == null)
 {
  return null;
 }

 if(in.isArray() && in != Object[].class)
 {
  Class<?> type = in.getComponentType();

  while(type.isArray())
  {
   type = type.getComponentType();
  }

  return type;
 }

 return in.getSuperclass();
}

Edit: Added some code to get all super-classes and interfaces of a certain class.

Answer 2

Take a look at Class.getInterfaces();

List<Object> list = new ArrayList<Object>();
for (Class c : list.getClass().getInterfaces()) {
    System.out.println(c.getName());
}

Answer 3

Does Class.isAssignableFrom() do what you need?

Class baseInterface = Class.forName("a.b.c.d.IMyInterface");
Class extendedInterface = Class.forName("a.b.d.c.ISomeOtherInterface");

if ( baseInterface.isAssignableFrom(extendedInterface) )
{
  // do stuff
}

Answer 4

if (interface.isAssignableFrom(extendedInterface))

is what you want

i always get the ordering backwards at first but recently realized that it's the exact opposite of using instanceof

if (extendedInterfaceA instanceof interfaceB)

is the same thing but you have to have instances of the classes rather than the classes themselves