In Scala Reflection, How to get generic type parameter of a concrete subclass?

Question

Assuming that I have a Generic superclass:

class GenericExample[T](
                         a: String,
                         b: T
                                


        

Answer 1

There are two approaches which I can suggest:

1) Reveal generic type from base class:

import scala.reflect.runtime.universe._

class GenericExample[T: TypeTag](a: String, b: T) {
  def fn(i: T) = "" + b + i
}

case class Example(a: String, b: Int) extends GenericExample[Int](a, b) {}

val classType = typeOf[Example].typeSymbol.asClass
val baseClassType = typeOf[GenericExample[_]].typeSymbol.asClass
val baseType = internal.thisType(classType).baseType(baseClassType)

baseType.typeArgs.head // returns reflect.runtime.universe.Type = scala.Int

2) Add implicit method which returns type:

import scala.reflect.runtime.universe._

class GenericExample[T](a: String, b: T) {
  def fn(i: T) = "" + b + i
}

case class Example(a: String, b: Int) extends GenericExample[Int](a, b)

implicit class TypeDetector[T: TypeTag](related: GenericExample[T]) {
  def getType(): Type = {
    typeOf[T]
  }
}

new Example("", 1).getType() // returns reflect.runtime.universe.Type = Int