How to get the methods that return the class members?

Question

I want to know if I can get the methods that returns class members.

For example I have a class called Person inside this class there is two members that are name and age and inside this class I have 4 methods as follow :

public class Person {

    private String name;
    private int age;

    public Person(String name, int age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }

    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }
}

so if I use the method Person.class.getDeclaredMethods(); it returns all the methods that are declared inside this class and also Person.class.getDeclaredMethods()[0].getReturnType(); returns the return type of the method.

But what I need is to get the methods that returns the two variables name and age In this case the methods are public String getName() and public int getAge().

What can I do?

Those are not global variables, they are member variables of the class. — Jesper, Jan 04 '15 at 21:44
In your class `name` and `age` **are not** global. They would need to have a `static` before them to be global. Also, to "get" them you'd need methods that start with "get". — Elliott Frisch, Jan 04 '15 at 21:45
@Sam It is.. That's how you learn, we're here to help and correct each others. — Maroun, Jan 04 '15 at 21:46
@Sam This link might help you http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15697217/how-to-get-return-value-of-invoked-method — Maroun, Jan 04 '15 at 21:51
@SotiriosDelimanolis I'm building a method that takes input of any object and saves the variables of this object inside a file — Sam, Jan 04 '15 at 22:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 04 '15 at 21:55

1

In your class name and age are not global. They would need to have a static before them to be global. In order to access your fields with an instance and reflection you could do something like

public static void main(String args[]) {
    Person p = new Person("Elliott", 37);
    Field[] fields = p.getClass().getDeclaredFields();
    for (Field f : fields) {
        try {
            f.setAccessible(true);
            String name = f.getName();
            String val = f.get(p).toString();
            System.out.printf("%s = %s%n", name, val);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Output is (as I would expect)

name = Elliott
age = 37

answered Jan 04 '15 at 21:55

Elliott Frisch

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@Sam Note that the above is accessing the fields directly; it's also possible to call through the methods but it's a bit more complicated - especially if you want the member values themselves. – Elliott Frisch Jan 04 '15 at 22:00
yeah actually I want the member values of any object if it possible – Sam Jan 04 '15 at 22:02
That's what this code gives you. – Elliott Frisch Jan 04 '15 at 22:03

How to get the methods that return the class members?

1 Answers1