How to search for Java API methods by type signature?

Question

Are there any open-source tools available which support searching for Java methods by the set of parameter types and return type?

As an example, say I\'m looking for

Answer 1

Very good question although I do not understand why do you need such tool. I am sorry to say it but it seems that it takes less time to implement such tool than to write this post. Here is a code that I have just implemented. It took 182 seconds. It is a static method that takes class, return type and arguments and returns all method of the class that match the signature.

import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

public class ClassUtil {
    public static Method[] getMethodsBySignature(Class clazz, Class returnType, Class... args) {
        List result = new ArrayList();
        for (Method m : clazz.getDeclaredMethods()) {
            if (m.getReturnType().equals(returnType)) {
                Class[] params = m.getParameterTypes();
                if (Arrays.equals(params, args)) {
                    result.add(m);
                }
            }
        }
        return result.toArray(new Method[result.size()]);
    }
}

You can spend another 5-10 minutes to implement method that opens jar, iterates over entries, calls Class.forName() and then calls my method. That's it!