What is reflection, and why is it useful?

Question

What is reflection, and why is it useful?

I'm particularly interested in Java, but I assume the principles are the same in any language(?).

Answer 1

The name reflection is used to describe code which is able to inspect other code in the same system (or itself).

For example, say you have an object of an unknown type in Java, and you would like to call a 'doSomething' method on it if one exists. Java's static typing system isn't really designed to support this unless the object conforms to a known interface, but using reflection, your code can look at the object and find out if it has a method called 'doSomething', and then, call it if you want to.

So, to give you a code example of this in Java (imagine the object in question is foo) :

Method method = foo.getClass().getMethod("doSomething", null);
method.invoke(foo, null);

One very common use case in Java is the usage with annotations. JUnit 4, for example, will use reflection to look through your classes for methods tagged with the @Test annotation, and will then call them when running the unit test.

There are some good reflection examples to get you started at http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/ALT/Reflection/index.html

And finally, yes, the concepts are pretty much similar in other statically types languages which support reflection (like C#). In dynamically typed languages, the use case described above is less necessary (since the compiler will allow any method to be called on any object, failing at runtime if it does not exist), but the second case of looking for methods which are marked or work in a certain way is still common.

Answer 2

Reflection is a set of functions which allows you to access the runtime information of your program and modify it behavior (with some limitations).

It's useful because it allows you to change the runtime behaivour depending on the meta information of your program, that is, you can check the return type of a function and change the way you handle the situation.

In C# for example you can load an assembly (a .dll) in runtime an examine it, navigating through the classes and taking actions according to what you found. It also let you create an instance of a class on runtime, invoke its method, etc.

Where can it be useful? Is not useful everytime but for concrete situations. For example you can use it to get the name of the class for loggin purposes, to dinamically create handlers for events according to what's specified on a configuration file and so on...

Answer 3

Not every language supports reflection but the principles are usually the same in languages that support it.

Reflection is the ability to "reflect" on the structure of your program. Or more concrete. To look at the objects and classes you have and programmatically get back information on the methods, fields, and interfaces they implement. You can also look at things like annotations.

It's usefull in a lot of situations. Everywhere you want to be able to dynamically plug in classes into your code. Lot's of object relational mappers use reflection to be able to instantiate objects from databases without knowing in advance what objects they're going to use. Plug-in architectures is another place where reflection is usefull. Being able to dynamically load code and determine if there are types there that implement the right interface to use as a plugin is important in those situations.

Answer 4

"Reflection" is a language's ability to inspect and dynamically call classes, methods, attributes, etc. at runtime. For example, all objects in Java has the method getClass, which lets you determine its class even if you don't know it at compile time (like if you declared it as Object) - this might seem trivial, but such reflection is not by default possible in less dynamic languages such as C++.

More advanced uses lets you list and call methods, constructors, etc.

Reflection is important since it lets you write programs that does not have to "know" everything at compile time, making them more dynamic, since they can be tied together at runtime. The code can be written against known interfaces, but the actual classes to be used can be instantiated using reflection from configuration files.

Lots of modern frameworks uses reflection extensively for this very reason.

Most other modern languages uses reflection as well, and in script languages like Python can be said to be even more tightly integrated, since it matches more naturally with the general programming model for those languages.

Answer 5

Reflection is a key mechanism to allow an application or framework to work with code that might not have even been written yet!

Take for example your typical web.xml file. This will contain a list of servlet elements, which contain nested servlet-class elements. The servlet container will process the web.xml file, and create new a new instance of each servlet class through reflection.

Another example would be the Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP). Where an XML parser provider is 'plugged-in' via well-known system properties, which are used to construct new instances through reflection.

And finally, the most comprehensive example is Spring which uses reflection to create its beans, and for its heavy use of proxies

Answer 6

For frameworks like Hibernate it is really useful! Hibernate instantiate your classes and access their fields by only knowing their names. Without reflection it would not be possible. It can even grant himself access to the private fields.

Answer 7

One of my favorite uses of reflection is the below Java dump method. It takes any object as a parameter and uses the Java reflection API print out every field name and value.

import java.lang.reflect.Array;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;

public static String dump(Object o, int callCount) {
    callCount++;
    StringBuffer tabs = new StringBuffer();
    for (int k = 0; k < callCount; k++) {
        tabs.append("\t");
    }
    StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
    Class oClass = o.getClass();
    if (oClass.isArray()) {
        buffer.append("\n");
        buffer.append(tabs.toString());
        buffer.append("[");
        for (int i = 0; i < Array.getLength(o); i++) {
            if (i < 0)
                buffer.append(",");
            Object value = Array.get(o, i);
            if (value.getClass().isPrimitive() ||
                    value.getClass() == java.lang.Long.class ||
                    value.getClass() == java.lang.String.class ||
                    value.getClass() == java.lang.Integer.class ||
                    value.getClass() == java.lang.Boolean.class
                    ) {
                buffer.append(value);
            } else {
                buffer.append(dump(value, callCount));
            }
        }
        buffer.append(tabs.toString());
        buffer.append("]\n");
    } else {
        buffer.append("\n");
        buffer.append(tabs.toString());
        buffer.append("{\n");
        while (oClass != null) {
            Field[] fields = oClass.getDeclaredFields();
            for (int i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
                buffer.append(tabs.toString());
                fields[i].setAccessible(true);
                buffer.append(fields[i].getName());
                buffer.append("=");
                try {
                    Object value = fields[i].get(o);
                    if (value != null) {
                        if (value.getClass().isPrimitive() ||
                                value.getClass() == java.lang.Long.class ||
                                value.getClass() == java.lang.String.class ||
                                value.getClass() == java.lang.Integer.class ||
                                value.getClass() == java.lang.Boolean.class
                                ) {
                            buffer.append(value);
                        } else {
                            buffer.append(dump(value, callCount));
                        }
                    }
                } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
                    buffer.append(e.getMessage());
                }
                buffer.append("\n");
            }
            oClass = oClass.getSuperclass();
        }
        buffer.append(tabs.toString());
        buffer.append("}\n");
    }
    return buffer.toString();
}