casting the return value from method.invoke()

[Roger F. Gay]

I have a method that is working fine. But the handling of return values from method.invoke() seems kinda funky. The method.invoke() call is in a loop that processes a bunch of files, the names of which are provided by the cmm.filename variable. All of the file handling functions return boolean (whether processing was successful or not). So, As you can see from the if statement, I just want to print an error message of the return value is false.

method.invoke returns an Object, which is received by Object initial. The compiler won't let me cast that directly to boolean .... i.e. initialized = (boolean)method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename);

Is there a nicer way to do this? Might there be some way perhaps through a series of method calls like obj.getType().bendOver().kissJava().toBoolean() kind of thing?

         boolean initialized = true;

          Object initial = method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename);
          if (initial.toString().equals("false")) {
            initialized = false;
            System.err.println("HLLStorage:readMasterCfg: configuration error processing " + cmm.name + " " + cmm.filename + " " + cmm.handler);
          }

[Rob Spoor]

boolean is represented using its wrapper type, Boolean. There are (at least) two ways for this:

Boolean initial = (Boolean)method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename);   
if (initial.booleanValue())

Object initial = method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename);   
if (Boolean.FALSE.equals(initial))

The first casts to the wrapper type, then uses the booleanValue() method to get its matching primitive value. Note that since Java 5.0, because of auto-boxing, you don't even need to call booleanValue().

The second compares the result with Boolean.FALSE, a static instance of the wrapper type that represents false. equals only returns true if the passed object is also a Boolean with the same value.

[Roger F. Gay]

Rob Prime wrote:boolean is represented using its wrapper type, Boolean. There are (at least) two ways for this:

Boolean initial = (Boolean)method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename);   
if (initial.booleanValue())

Object initial = method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename);   
if (Boolean.FALSE.equals(initial))

The first casts to the wrapper type, then uses the booleanValue() method to get its matching primitive value. Note that since Java 5.0, because of auto-boxing, you don't even need to call booleanValue().

The second compares the result with Boolean.FALSE, a static instance of the wrapper type that represents false. equals only returns true if the passed object is also a Boolean with the same value.

Thanks. That solved my problem and then some.

In my attempt:

initialized = (boolean)method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename); 
    

boolean != Boolean


....

[Kiaamaa Liammes]

if you getting the object as string then you can try this

 Boolean yourObject = new Boolean(str);  
((Boolean) yourObject).booleanValue();
 

[Roger F. Gay]

This seems kinda cool:

  if (Boolean.FALSE.equals((Boolean)method.invoke(hsthis, cmm.filename))) return(false);  

  .... at the end, if false has not been returned earlier .... 
       return(true); 

I'll let the called method provide detailed information if there's an error and the calling method simply report a failure if false is returned. Now I'm a speed demon.

[Rob Spoor]

You don't need that cast to Boolean (nor the parentheses around false). The equals method takes an Object; internally it will check if it's a Boolean or not.