Check if a Class Object is subclass of another Class Object in Java

Question

I\'m playing around with Java\'s reflection API and trying to handle some fields. Now I\'m stuck with identifying the type of my fields. Strings are easy, just do myFi

Answer 1

This is an improved version of @schuttek's answer. It is improved because it correctly return false for primitives (e.g. isSubclassOf(int.class, Object.class) => false) and also correctly handles interfaces (e.g. isSubclassOf(HashMap.class, Map.class) => true).

static public boolean isSubclassOf(final Class<?> clazz, final Class<?> possibleSuperClass)
{
    if (clazz == null || possibleSuperClass == null)
    {
        return false;
    }
    else if (clazz.equals(possibleSuperClass))
    {
        return true;
    }
    else
    {
        final boolean isSubclass = isSubclassOf(clazz.getSuperclass(), possibleSuperClass);

        if (!isSubclass && clazz.getInterfaces() != null)
        {
            for (final Class<?> inter : clazz.getInterfaces())
            {
                if (isSubclassOf(inter, possibleSuperClass))
                {
                    return true;
                }
            }
        }

        return isSubclass;
    }
}

Answer 2

This works for me:

protected boolean isTypeOf(String myClass, Class<?> superClass) {
    boolean isSubclassOf = false;
    try {
        Class<?> clazz = Class.forName(myClass);
        if (!clazz.equals(superClass)) {
            clazz = clazz.getSuperclass();
            isSubclassOf = isTypeOf(clazz.getName(), superClass);
        } else {
            isSubclassOf = true;
        }

    } catch(ClassNotFoundException e) {
        /* Ignore */
    }
    return isSubclassOf;
}