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Message:

solution

Posted by Erik Buitenhuis on July 18, 2000 at 4:11 AM

Thanks to Kishori I found a solution to the problem.
Because the method I need to invoke is private, I need to use getDeclaredMethod() instead of getMethod(). This method does not work through superclass methods so I needed to sort of re-invent inheritance. see the code snippet below!

WHY ISN'T THIS IN THE JAVA LANGUAGE?

// call setParent method of node's subclass
// if it's not in the subclass NoSuchMethodException is thrown
// and we use the super class method

for (Class cls = node.getClass(); ; cls = cls.getSuperclass()) {
try {

// getMethod() gets only public methods,
// getDeclaredMethod () gets all
// methods you have access to (but no inherited methods!).
Class[] argClass = {Node.class};
Method m = cls.getDeclaredMethod("setParent", argClass);

// invoke cls.setParent()
Object[] arg = {this};
if (((Boolean)(m.invoke(node, arg))).booleanValue()) break;
return false;

} catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
continue; // try super class
} catch (Exception e) {
Debug.println(""+e);
Debug.assert(false); // never gets here
}
}