Java send instanceof as paramater

Question

This might be a stupid question but I gotta know if there is a way to send the instance of a object to a method?

Like this:

    public class TestClass
    {
        public TestClass()
        {
            //Initialize
        }
    }

    public class AnotherClass
    {
        Instance!? mInstance;

        public AnotherClass(Instance!? instance)
        {
            mInstance = instance;
        }

        public boolean isInstanceOfTestClass()
        {
            return mInstance == TestClass;
        }
    }

    public class Main
    {
        public static void main(String[] args)
        {
            AnotherClass a = new AnotherClass(TestClass);

            if(a.isInstanceOfTestClass)
                System.out.println("lala");
        }
    }

(Tried to make it wrapped as codeblock)

Answer 1

There's no such thing as an "instance of an object". An object is an instance of a class - so "instance" and "object" refer to the same thing.

You can use the instanceof operator to test if an arbitrary object is an instance of a particular class:

if (a instanceof AnotherClass) {
    // ...
}

There's also the class java.lang.Class , which represents the class of an object. You can get it by calling getClass() on an object:

Class<?> cls = a.getClass();

See the API documentation of java.lang.Class .

Answer 2

Well you can use Class.isAssignableFrom and construct with an instance of Class where T is the class you want to test for.

But if you are bothered about about enforcing typing and making non-type specific classes I suggest you read up on generics.