Tag Archives: Reflections

Reflection is a powerful feature of Java which provides the ability to inspect & modify the code at run time (manipulate internal properties of the program).

For example: It’s possible for a Java class to obtain the names of all its members and display them. Even we can also use reflection to instantiate an object, invoke it’s methods and change field values.

How it is done?

For every object JVM creates an immutable Class object which is used by reflection to get the run time properties of that object and once it has access we can change the properties. Reflection is not something which is used in daily programming tasks as it has some cons as well, one being a security threat, as using reflection we can get access to the private variables of a class and then can change it’s value.

How do we get access to the class object?

object.getClass();

After having the access we can get the methods, variables and constructors etc.