How to find type without using instanceof?

Question

I have a List of interface type Criteria within my class Query.

List criteria = new ArrayList

        

Answer 1

You can also use:

for(Criteria c : criteria) {
   if(c.getClass() == ContextualCriteria.class){
       // logic
   }
   if ...
}

Note that Object#getClass() returns the runtime type of c, so you can't reliably use this if ContextualCriteria can be subclassed for example. To do this you would need to use Class#isAssignableFrom():

for(Criteria c : criteria) {
   if(ContextualCriteria.class.isAssignableFrom(c)){
       // logic
   }
   if ...
}