Java8 dynamic proxy and default methods

Question

Having a dynamic proxy for an interface with default methods, how do I invoke a default method? By using something like defaultmethod.invoke(this, ...) you just

Answer 1

The accepted answer uses setAccessible(true) to break into MethodHandles.Lookup, something that is restricted in Java 9 and beyond. This mail describes a JDK change that works for Java 9 or later.

It is possible to get this to work on Java 8 (and later) if you can get the writer of the interface to call your utility with an instance of MethodHandles.Lookup created in the interface (so it gets the permission to access the default methods of the interface):

interface HelloGenerator {
  public static HelloGenerator  createProxy() {
    // create MethodHandles.Lookup here to get access to the default methods
    return Utils.createProxy(MethodHandles.lookup(), HelloGenerator.class);
  }
  abstract String name();
  default void sayHello() {
    System.out.println("Hello " + name());
  }
}

public class Utils {
  static 
 P createProxy(MethodHandles.Lookup lookup, Class
 type) {
    InvocationHandler handler = (proxy, method, args) -> {
        if (method.isDefault()) {
          // can use unreflectSpecial here, but only because MethodHandles.Lookup
          // instance was created in the interface and passed through
          return lookup
              .unreflectSpecial(method, method.getDeclaringClass())
              .bindTo(proxy)
              .invokeWithArguments(args);
        }
        return ...; // your desired proxy behaviour
    };

    Object proxy = Proxy.newProxyInstance(
        type.getClassLoader(), new Class[] {type}, handler);
    return type.cast(proxy);
  }
}

This approach won't handle all Java 8 use cases, but it did handle mine.