This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Ryan Ransford. Original Post: Java Problem: Generic Inheritance and Calling GetMethod().getReturnType() Feed Title: Active-Active Configuration Feed URL: http://active-active.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default Feed Description: Active-Active Configuration is a blog about making my place in the enterprise world better. This blog is primarily focused on Java articles, but be prepared to be challenged by posts about dynamic languages, agile tools, and the lighter side of geek culture. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Ryan Ransford Latest Posts From Active-Active Configuration

In my current project, I have classes which are modeled like the following. At some point, a method like getReturnTypeForGetId() is called on classes A and B. Calling the method with A returns Integer as expected, but B returns Serializable.

What am I missing here? Am I getting bitten by some heinous erasure thing, or am I just missing out on some sort of generic context-clobbering?

EDIT: Adding an over-ridden getId() method to B fixes the problem, but I would still like to understand what I am running into.

I've also asked this question on stackoverflow.

import java.io.Serializable;

public class WeirdTester {
    static interface Identifiable<T extends Serializable> {
        T getId();
        void setId(final T id);
    }

    static abstract class BaseEntity<T extends Serializable> implements Identifiable<T> {
        private T id;
        public T getId() { return id; }
        public void setId(final T id) { this.id = id; }
    }

    static class A implements Identifiable<Integer> {
        private Integer id;
        public Integer getId() { return id; }
        public void setId(final Integer id) { this.id = id; }
    }

    static class B extends BaseEntity<Integer> {}

    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    private static <T extends Serializable, Q extends Identifiable<T>> Class<T> getReturnTypeForGetId(
            final Class<Q> clazz) throws Exception {
        return (Class<T>) clazz.getMethod("getId", (Class[])null).getReturnType();
    }

    public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
        System.out.println(getReturnTypeForGetId(A.class));
        // CONSOLE: "class java.lang.Integer"
        System.out.println(getReturnTypeForGetId(B.class));
        // CONSOLE: "interface java.io.Serializable"
    }
}