Groovy way to dynamically instantiate a class from String

Question

The answers of this question about the Groovy way to dynamically invoke a static method were very helpful but I'm having trouble with the following case:

I defined a simple Groovy class:

class Item {   def id = 1   def data = [ "a", "b" ] } 

I then defined a simple utility class that wants to dynamically load the Item class:

class Util {   static def main(args) {      def cls = "Item" as Class      def instance = cls.newInstance()      println instance.toString()   } } 

Util.groovy is in the same folder as Item.groovy

When I try to run Util.groovy I get the following error:

Caught: org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.typehandling.GroovyCastException:  Cannot cast object 'Item' with class 'java.lang.String'  to class 'java.lang.Class' due to:  java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Item         at Util.main(Util.groovy:3) 

The only way that I could make it work was by using groovyc to precompile Item.groovy, but this misses the point of being Groovy :)

Answer 1

This works, using the underlying GroovyClassLoader:

def instance = this.class.classLoader.loadClass( 'Item', true, false )?.newInstance() 

Answer 2

I just had to do this and found an interesting way--so I thought I'd come back and mention it.

I had A problem with this because I wanted to pass a value to newInstance (use a non-default constructor) and all the solutions seemed to be a little bit of work (I'm lazy, okay?)

Anyway, suppose you want to create a new Integer(5)... try this:

c = "java.lang.Integer" p = "5" def result = Eval.me("return new ${c}(${p})") assert(result == 5) 

Worked really well although I'm sure it's about the slowest solution possible. Has the advantage that the method is applicable to many other situations.