Given an instance of any class type, how to find out which parent class and/or traits it inherits from or implements?

Question

Suppose there are class/trait definitions as follows:

trait T1 {}
trait T2 {}
abstract class A{}

class B {}
class C extends A with T1 with T2 {}

val b = new B with T1
val c = new C

Given the instance of b and c, how do I get their inheritance information (i.e. to know that b implements T1, and c implements A, T1 and T2) ?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

If you don't know the type of the object (you have some AnyRef) and just want to test whether it's instance of some class or trait, then you can use isInstanceOf:

b.isInstanceOf[T2]

If you then want to cast it to that type, then use asInstanceOf

b.asInstanceOf[T1]

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From the other hand, if you don't know what you are searching for, then you can try to use Java reflection. To get list of implemented traits and interfaces use:

c.getClass.getInterfaces

To get superclass use:

c.getClass.getSuperclass