Reflection is used to dynamically operate classes and objects at runtime, and is commonly used in general tool development. Its core steps include obtaining class information, viewing structures, creating instances, calling methods, and accessing private members; when using it, you need to pay attention to performance, security, maintainability and version compatibility issues.
Many people know that reflection is useful, but they always feel a little weak when they really use it and don’t know where to start. In fact, the core function of reflection is to allow you to dynamically understand and operate classes, objects, and methods during runtime. To put it simply, it allows you to "see through" the structure of a class, even call its methods or modify its properties, without determining the specific type when writing code.
When will reflection be used?
The most common situation is when you write general tools. For example, if you make a serialization framework, it is impossible to know in advance what kind of class the user is passing in; or if you want to do a dependency injection container, you need to automatically create objects based on configuration; for example, unit testing tools also rely on reflection to discover test methods and execute them.
There are also times when you want to bypass encapsulation, such as accessing private fields or methods (although this is done with caution). In short, reflection comes in handy when you need to deal with uncertain types but want to handle logic uniformly .
How to start using reflection? Several basic steps
The reflection mechanisms of different languages ??are slightly different. Here we take mainstream static languages ??such as Java and C# as examples to talk about a few key points:
- Get class information : for example, in Java, use
Class> clazz = obj.getClass();
orClass.forName("完整類名")
. - Check the structure of the class : you can obtain the class's methods, fields, constructors and other information through reflection, such as
clazz.getMethods()
. - Dynamically create instances and call methods : for example, create an object with
clazz.newInstance()
, and then call the method throughmethod.invoke(obj, args)
. - Accessing private members : Setting
setAccessible(true)
can skip access permission restrictions, but it is not recommended to abuse it.
Note that reflection performance is usually not as good as direct calls, so try to use as little as possible in areas that are sensitive to performance, or cache them well.
Issues to be aware of when using reflection
Although the reflection is good, there are several pits that are easy to tread:
- Performance issues : Each time you call the reflection method is much slower than direct calls, especially when you call it frequently. If you have to use it, it is best to cache the reflected results.
- Security Limitations : Some environments (such as Android's ART or some JVM security policies) restrict reflection operations, especially when accessing private members.
- Poor readability and maintenance : Reflective code is often not intuitive enough, and it may not be easy to understand when others take over your code.
- Version compatibility issues : Reflective behavior may change after some JDK versions are updated, especially the higher version of JDK has imposed stricter restrictions on methods such as
getDeclaredMethods()
.
If you just want to make simple dynamic calls, you can consider combining annotation reflection methods, which can not only keep the code clear but also achieve flexible control.
Basically that's it. Reflection is not something you need to use every day, but it is indeed one of the important tools for building advanced features. Mastering it will allow you to write more general and flexible code.
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