Knowing type of generic in Java

Question

I have a generic class, says :

MyClass

Inside a method of this class, I would like to test the type of T, for example :

Answer 1

Because of type erasure you can't... mostly. But there is one exception to that. Consider:

class A {
  List list;
}

public class Main {
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    for (Field field : A.class.getDeclaredFields()) {
      System.out.printf("%s: %s%n", field.getName(), field.getGenericType());
    }
  }
}

Output:

list: java.util.List

If you need the class object, this is how you generally handle it:

public  T createObject(Class clazz) {  
  return clazz.newInstance();
}

ie by passing the class object around and deriving the generic type from that class.