What is the easiest way to test (using reflection), whether given method (i.e. java.lang.Method instance) has a return type, which can be safely casted to List<String>?
Consider this snippet:
public static class StringList extends ArrayList<String> {}
public List<String> method1();
public ArrayList<String> method2();
public StringList method3();
All methods 1, 2, 3 fulfill the requirement. It's quite easy to test it for the method1 (via getGenericReturnType(), which returns instance of ParameterizedType), but for methods2 and 3, it's not so obvious. I imagine, that by traversing all getGenericSuperclass() and getGenericInterfaces(), we can get quite close, but I don't see, how to match the TypeVariable in List<E> (which occurs somewhere in the superclass interfaces) with the actual type parameter (i.e. where this E is matched to String).
Or maybe is there a completely different (easier) way, which I overlook?
EDIT: For those looking into it, here is method4, which also fulfills the requirement and which shows some more cases, which have to be investigated:
public interface Parametrized<T extends StringList> {
T method4();
}