Note: Code with sequences of "if (x instanceof MyClass) usually indicates that you are not using polymorphism enough. Code can usually be refactored to get rid of the need to test this. But I'll ignore this for the sake of answering the question asked.
You can do what you are trying to do, but not without some code changes. Method overloading cannot do what you need because in Java, method overloading is decided at compile time. Thus, if you have two methods in a class where both methods have the same name, same return type, but different parameter types, then any code invoking this overloaded method must make explicit which one will be invoked. Your current code does this with the types it provides due to the use of explicit casts but the fully dynamic version does not. If method overloading were decided at runtime, then your code would do what you want. But because it is decided at compile time, your code does not compile.
To solve your problem, you can use generics, or you can restructure your code. First I'll introduce a test harness that shows a very simplified version of what you're starting with:
public class Test {
public void test(Object obj) {
if (obj instanceof Horse) {
Horse c = (Horse) obj;
noise(c);
}
if (obj instanceof Cow) {
Cow c = (Cow) obj;
noise(c);
}
}
public void noise(Horse h) {
System.out.println("Neigh");
}
public void noise(Cow c) {
System.out.println("Moo");
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Object o1 = new Horse();
Object o2 = new Cow();
Test tester = new Test();
tester.test(o1);
tester.test(o2);
}
}
class Horse {}
class Cow {}
This code runs and does what you would expect. It prints "Neigh" followed by "Moo".
You are trying to replace
if (obj instanceof Horse) {
Horse c = (Horse) obj;
noise(c);
}
with
if (obj instanceof Horse) {
handleNoise(obj, Horse.class);
}
and then adding the method to handle it (simplified):
void handleNoise(Object obj, Class clazz) {
noise(clazz.cast(obj));
}
and as I said before, this doesn't work the overloading of noise is decided at compile time. The compiler sees that you are casting, but does not know at compile time what the type is. So it cannot pick an overloading and compilation fails.
The best way to solve this is by using polymorphism, because polymorphism is decided at runtime. That is, have all of those classes implement some interface and then move the code in question into the individual classes. Here is an example that does this:
public class Test {
public void test(Animal obj) {
obj.noise();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Animal o1 = new Horse();
Animal o2 = new Cow();
Test tester = new Test();
tester.test(o1);
tester.test(o2);
}
}
interface Animal {
void noise();
}
class Horse implements Animal {
public void noise() {
System.out.println("Neigh");
}
}
class Cow implements Animal {
public void noise() {
System.out.println("Moo");
}
}
Notice how much simpler the test method is! If you can have each item implement an interface that handles what you call stringProp below, then you can simplify part way:
if (obj instanceof Cust) {
loopOverSet(c.getCustPhonSet());
} else if (obj instanceof Name) {
loopOverSet(c.getCustNameSet());
}
// and so on for the rest...
and then add the method:
void loopOVerSet(Set cxSet) {
if (cxSet != null && cxSet.size() > 0) {
Iterator cxSetIterator = cxSet.iterator();
while (cxSetIterator.hasNext())
{
((StringProp)cxSetIterator.next()).stringProp();
}
}
}
This assumes that the previously-overloaded methods stringProp have been moved into the individual classes CustPhone and CustName and so on and that these classes all implement some interface which I've called StringProp where this interface defines the method stringProp(). Since this code is using overriding instead of overloading it will be decided at runtime.