How to create an object reference variable based on a variable

Question

This is kind of complicated, but I need to have my program to be able to detect, which class to reference based on the data of an array.

I know how to do this by using a huge if statement, but that would be a HUGE amount of code. Is there a way to like put the variable so that it would be like
String x; x new = new x();
if you get the idea. x would hold the class name. Or is there another way to do this? Thanks.

Use reflection. It's not exactly fixed the way you are describing though... — Sotirios Delimanolis
– Sotirios Delimanolis, Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 21:03
This feels like an XY problem/question .. can you explain the task better? This desired approach cannot work in a static-typed manner as envisioned. The "best" that could be done based on a stricter interpretation of the question is: Object x = CreateInstanceOfSomeTypeDynamically(str) or similar. Note that this results in 1) a fixed variable name (x) and 2) not a very useful type refinement on said variable (an interface of supertype could unify a bit, but it feels like an XY problem). — user2246674
– user2246674, Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 21:07

Daniel Kaplan · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-19 21:04:17Z

5

You should use Java Reflection for this. Here's a link to the tutorials. This one will be the most relevant. Here's an example of what you can do:

String x = ...
Class c = Class.forName(x);
X x = c.newInstance()

answered Sep 19, 2013 at 21:04

Daniel Kaplan

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