How do you cast a List of objects from one type to another in Java?

Question

For example, lets say you have two classes:

public class TestA {}
public class TestB extends TestA{}

I have a method that returns a List<TestA> and I would like to cast all the objects in that list to TestB so that I'd end up with List<TestB>.

Answer 1

You really can't, see this Java tutorial for the full explanation.

Answer 2

I think you are casting in the wrong direction though... if the method returns a list of TestA objects, then it really isn't safe to cast them to TestB.

Basically you are asking the compiler to let you perform TestB operations on a type TestA that does not support them.

Answer 3

This is possible due to type erasure. You will find that

List<TestA> x = new ArrayList<TestA>();
List<TestB> y = new ArrayList<TestB>();
x.getClass().equals(y.getClass()); // true

Internally both lists are of type List<Object>. For that reason you can't cast one to the other - there is nothing to cast.

Answer 4

if you have an object of the class TestA, you can't cast it to TestB. every TestB is a TestA, but not the other way.

in the following code:

TestA a = new TestA();
TestB b = (TestB) a;

the second line would throw a ClassCastException.

you can only cast a TestA reference if the object itself is TestB. for example:

TestA a = new TestB();
TestB b = (TestB) a;

so, you may not always cast a list of TestA to a list of TestB.

Answer 5

You cannot cast List<TestB> to List<TestA> as Steve Kuo mentions BUT you can dump the contents of List<TestA> into List<TestB>. Try the following:

List<TestA> result = new List<TestA>();
List<TestB> data = new List<TestB>();
result.addAll(data);

I've not tried this code so there are probably mistakes but the idea is that it should iterate through the data object adding the elements (TestB objects) into the List. I hope that works for you.

Answer 6

Jordan S. Jones's suggestion of simply casting to List<TestB> almost works; but it doesn't work because you can't cast a generic type of one parameter to another. However, you can cast through an intermediate wildcard type and it will be allowed (since you can cast to and from wildcard types, just with an unchecked warning):

List<TestB> variable = (List<TestB>)(List<?>) collectionOfListA;

Answer 7

When you cast an object reference you are just casting the type of the reference, not the type of the object. casting won't change the actual type of the object.

Java doesn't have implicit rules for converting Object types. (Unlike primitives)

Instead you need to provide how to convert one type to another and call it manually.

public class TestA {}
public class TestB extends TestA{ 
    TestB(TestA testA) {
        // build a TestB from a TestA
    }
}

List<TestA> result = .... 
List<TestB> data = new List<TestB>();
for(TestA testA : result) {
   data.add(new TestB(testA));
}

This is more verbose than in a language with direct support, but it works and you shouldn't need to do this very often.

Answer 8

casting of generics is not possible, but if you define the list in another way it is possible to store TestB in it:

List<? extends TestA> = new List<? extends TestA>

You still have type checking to do when you are using the objects in the list.