How do I determine if a class extends another class in Java?

Question

In Java how do I go about determining what classes a class extends?

public class A{
}

public class B extends A{
}

public class C extends A{
}

public class         


        

Answer 1

The getSuperClass() approach would fail for E since its immediate superclass is not A, but B. Rather use Class#isAssignableFrom().

public void myFunc(Class cls){
     //need to check that cls is a class which extends A
     //i.e. B, C and E but not A or D

     if (cls != A.class && A.class.isAssignableFrom(cls)) {
         // ...
     }
}