Access overwritten method of parent class

[Peter Irmstadt]

Hi!

I have the following construct:

public class Test {
	static class A 
	{
		public String getTest()
		{
			return "A";
		}
	}
	static class B extends A
	{
		@Override
		public String getTest() {
			return "B";
		}
	}
	
	
	
	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		B o = new B();
		System.out.println(o.getTest()); //Output: B
		System.out.println(((A)o).getTest()); //Output: B
	}
}

The first output of the main method of course is 'B'. The second is 'B' as well because A's method getTest has been overwritten by B. Is it anyhow possible to access the overwritten method and get the output 'A' from the object o?
I can't use Reflection for this at all because this will be transfered to an existing problem on the Android platform (but I posted it here because it isn't a pure Android problem).

Is there any way to realize that using 'Standard Java'?

Thank you in advance!

[Garrett Rowe]

No. That is what polymorphism is all about. Basically if you need the behavior of A, then you need an instance of A not an instance of B.

[shivendra tripathi]

Hi Peter,

Can you tell me how we can achive this using reflection ?

[Bear Bibeault]

A better way to achieve it it is with proper class design.

[shivendra tripathi]

Can anyone help with source code to achieve the scenario mentioned in thread using reflection.

[Rob Spoor]

You can't. Sure, you can get access to the Method of class A. But if you then call invoke on it, it will still call B's getTest:

Class<A> clsA = A.class;
Method method = clsA.getMethod("getTest");
method.invoke(o); // prints B

[joseph guse]

It should be noted that the subclass CAN access the overwritten method by using the super keyword. Not sure how useful this is to the original questioner, but if you added a method "getTestSuper()" to your B class like so

public String getTestSuper(){
	return super.getTest();
}

Now this can be called from you main method

System.out.println(o.getTestSuper()); //Output: A