How to call a superclass method using Java reflection

Question

I have two classes:

public class A {     public Object method() {...} }  public class B extends A {     @Override     public Object method() {...} } 

I have an instance of B. How do I call A.method() from b? Basically, the same effect as calling super.method() from B.

B b = new B(); Class<?> superclass = b.getClass().getSuperclass(); Method method = superclass.getMethod("method", ArrayUtils.EMPTY_CLASS_ARRAY); Object value = method.invoke(obj, ArrayUtils.EMPTY_OBJECT_ARRAY); 

But the above code will still invoke B.method().

Answer 1

If you are using JDK7, you can use MethodHandle to achieve this:

public class Test extends Base {   public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {     MethodHandle h1 = MethodHandles.lookup().findSpecial(Base.class, "toString",         MethodType.methodType(String.class),         Test.class);     MethodHandle h2 = MethodHandles.lookup().findSpecial(Object.class, "toString",         MethodType.methodType(String.class),         Test.class);     System.out.println(h1.invoke(new Test()));   // outputs Base     System.out.println(h2.invoke(new Test()));   // outputs Base   }    @Override   public String toString() {     return "Test";   }  }  class Base {   @Override   public String toString() {     return "Base";   } }