Package net.sf.mmm.util.reflect.api

Provides the API for utilities that help to deal with reflection.

See:
Description

Interface Summary

AnnotationUtil	This is the interface for a collection of utility functions to deal with annotations.
ClassResolver	This is the callback interface used to resolve a type by some logical name to the Class reflecting that type.
CollectionReflectionUtil	This is the interface for a collection of utility functions to deal with Collections reflectively.
GenericType<T>	This is the interface of a generic type and allows simple and powerful access to the complex generic type-system introduced in Java5.
GenericTypeFactory	This is the interface for a factory with ability to create GenericTypes.
ReflectionUtil	This is the interface for a collection of utility functions to deal with reflection.

Class Summary

Arguments	This class represents an argument list.
Signature	This class represents a "method signature".

Enum Summary

VisibilityModifier

This enum contains the possible modifiers for the visibility of a java element (type, field, method or constructor).

Exception Summary

AccessFailedException	An AccessFailedException is thrown if a reflective call failed because the executing code does NOT have access to the according definition.
AnnotationNotForTargetException	A AnnotationNotForTargetException is thrown if an Annotation should be resolved for a specific ElementType that it is NOT targeted for.
AnnotationNotRuntimeException	A AnnotationNotRuntimeException is thrown if an Annotation should be resolved at runtime but has NOT the Retention RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME.
InstantiationFailedException	An InstantiationFailedException indicates that the instantiation of a Class failed for arbitrary reasons.
InvocationFailedException	An InvocationFailedException is thrown if a reflective invocation of an AccessibleObject failed.
ReflectionException	A ReflectionException is thrown if an operation using reflection failed.
TypeNotFoundException	A TypeNotFoundException is thrown if a Type was requested (e.g. via Class.forName(String)) but could NOT be found.

Package net.sf.mmm.util.reflect.api Description

Provides the API for utilities that help to deal with reflection.

Reflection-Util API

Java reflection is a powerful mechanism that allows flexible and generic programming. With Java5 a generic type-system was introduced. However this is quite a wild animal and this way hard to deal with via the reflection API. Therefore this package provides the interface GenericType that allows simple access to the complex generic type-system.
You will also find utilities that make reflection a lot easier and may offer features that you may not even know they where possible such as finding all classes located in the classpath or a specific package.
Therefore ReflectionUtil will help you to deal with reflection. For advanced support when reading annotations have a look at AnnotationUtil. Additionally CollectionReflectionUtil offers reflective and generic operations on Collections.
Further the interface ClassResolver allows to retrieve Classes by name in order to abstract from ClassLoaders as well as to do name mappings (e.g. Object to java.lang.Object).