Check what type a list class is of in java

Question

Given that I have a

Class<?> clazz

I want to verify if clazz is a list of my specific object

So I started with

if (List.class.isAssignableFrom(type)) {

}

but up till here I only verified that it is List<?>. How can I verify for example it is a List<String>?

Answer 1

You can't. Due to the nature of generics, at runtime the type information is erased. If you have an empty List, you can't tell anything for sure. If it's non-empty, you can check the first element and see if it's a String. That of course won't tell whether it's a List<String>, List<CharSequence> or a raw list.

What do you intend to do with the information if you get it? There's bound to be a better approach.