doing without instanceof

[John Coleman]

Hi,

Can I use generics or covariant return types to somehow avoid using iinstanceof here:

target.setField(source.getField(field));

In this case both the setter and getter demand field to be a subclass of type Field, rather than of Field as presently.

These are types and methods from a third party library, I cannot change the implementations.

TIA

[Ilja Preuss]

Even with Java 1.0, you don't need to use instanceof in this case - just cast to the type that is required.

If you can't change the code of the methods, generics or covariant return types can't help you, or so it seems to me.

[John Coleman]

Originally posted by Ilja Preuss:
Even with Java 1.0, you don't need to use instanceof in this case - just cast to the type that is required.

If you can't change the code of the methods, generics or covariant return types can't help you, or so it seems to me.

Unfortunately I think your comment above is right, and I have to code:

if (field instanceof StringField) {
target.setField((StringField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof DoubleField) {
target.setField((DoubleField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof IntField) {
target.setField((IntField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof CharField) {
target.setField((CharField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof BooleanField) {
target.setField((BooleanField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof UtcDateOnlyField) {
target.setField((UtcDateOnlyField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof UtcTimeOnlyField) {
target.setField((UtcTimeOnlyField) field);
} else
if (field instanceof UtcTimeStampField) {
target.setField((UtcTimeStampField) field);
}

But that's inefficient to execute and maintain.

Something like this looks good, but since there is no setField<T>, not possible.

setField(field.getClass(), field, target);

static <T> void setField(Class<T> clazz, Field field, FieldMap target) {
target.setField(clazz.cast(field));
}