Can I obtain method parameter name using Java reflection?

Question

In Java 8 you can do the following:

import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.lang.reflect.Parameter;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public final class Methods {

    public static List<String> getParameterNames(Method method) {
        Parameter[] parameters = method.getParameters();
        List<String> parameterNames = new ArrayList<>();

        for (Parameter parameter : parameters) {
            if(!parameter.isNamePresent()) {
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Parameter names are not present!");
            }

            String parameterName = parameter.getName();
            parameterNames.add(parameterName);
        }

        return parameterNames;
    }

    private Methods(){}
}

So for your class Whatever we can do a manual test:

import java.lang.reflect.Method;

public class ManualTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Method[] declaredMethods = Whatever.class.getDeclaredMethods();

        for (Method declaredMethod : declaredMethods) {
            if (declaredMethod.getName().equals("aMethod")) {
                System.out.println(Methods.getParameterNames(declaredMethod));
                break;
            }
        }
    }
}

which should print [aParam] if you have passed -parameters argument to your Java 8 compiler.

For Maven users:

<properties>
    <!-- PLUGIN VERSIONS -->
    <maven-compiler-plugin.version>3.1</maven-compiler-plugin.version>

    <!-- OTHER PROPERTIES -->
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${maven-compiler-plugin.version}</version>
            <configuration>
                <!-- Original answer -->
                <compilerArgument>-parameters</compilerArgument>
                <!-- Or, if you use the plugin version >= 3.6.2 -->
                <parameters>true</parameters>
                <testCompilerArgument>-parameters</testCompilerArgument>
                <source>${java.version}</source>
                <target>${java.version}</target>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

For more information see following links:

1. Official Java Tutorial: Obtaining Names of Method Parameters
2. JEP 118: Access to Parameter Names at Runtime
3. Javadoc for Parameter class

To summarize:

• getting parameter names is possible if debug information is included during compilation. See this answer for more details
• otherwise getting parameter names is not possible
• getting parameter type is possible, using method.getParameterTypes()

For the sake of writing autocomplete functionality for an editor (as you stated in one of the comments) there are a few options:

• use arg0, arg1, arg2 etc.
• use intParam, stringParam, objectTypeParam, etc.
• use a combination of the above - the former for non-primitive types, and the latter for primitive types.
• don't show argument names at all - just the types.

The Paranamer library was created to solve this same problem.

It tries to determine method names in a few different ways. If the class was compiled with debugging it can extract the information by reading the bytecode of the class.

Another way is for it to inject a private static member into the bytecode of the class after it is compiled, but before it is placed in a jar. It then uses reflection to extract this information from the class at runtime.

https://github.com/paul-hammant/paranamer

I had problems using this library, but I did get it working in the end. I'm hoping to report the problems to the maintainer.

see org.springframework.core.DefaultParameterNameDiscoverer class

DefaultParameterNameDiscoverer discoverer = new DefaultParameterNameDiscoverer();
String[] params = discoverer.getParameterNames(MathUtils.class.getMethod("isPrime", Integer.class));