Is Dynamic Casting Possible in Java

Posted by Tom Tucker on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Tom Tucker
Published on 2010-12-24T02:36:29Z Indexed on 2010/12/24 2:54 UTC
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So I have a class of overloaded methods like this:

class Foo {
    public void test(Object value) {
        ...
    }

    public void test(String value) {
        ...
    }
}

I need to pass a property value of a bean to one of these methods depending on its type, but I don't know the actual property type until the runtime. e.g.

public void run(Object bean, String propertyName) {
    Foo foo = new Foo();
    foo.test(PropertyUtils.getProperty(bean, propertyName));
}

BTW, PropertyUtils.getProperty() is a helper method that returns a value of the specified property on a bean. PropertyUtils.getProperty() returns an Object, so that test(Object value) will be always called and the actual property type will be ignored.

I can figure out the propery type in the runtime, even if its value is null. Is there such a thing as dynamic casting in Java? If not, is there a way to have an overloaded method with the correct parameter type called?

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