Invoke static method dynamically without using reflection

Question

Say I have something like so:

public class Entity<T> {

  public Class<T> model;

  public Entity(Class<T> m){
    this.model = m;
  }

}

so we use it like:

var ent = new Entity<String>(String.class);

but I can't call:

ent.model.format() 

or

ent.model.join()

etc. None of the static methods are available in this case. Is there a way to call these static methods without using reflection?

Answer 1

Seems like you want to bind the type to the attribute in your Entity class, for which you can ideally follow the approach as :

class Entity<T> {
    public T model;
    public Entity(T m) {
        this.model = m;
    }
}

which can then be instantiated as :

var ent = new Entity<>(""); // T is inferred based on the attribute type in the c'tor call
// or also  explicitly specified as
var ent = new Entity<String>(""); //redundant though 

and then use it further as :

ent.model.format(""); // in this example 'model' is a 'String' with empty value ""