How to find in a method being called, which class & method invoked it?

[arul]

At times (chain-of-responsibilty pattern, debugging etc), it is very handy to know in a method being called, which method invoked it. For example You may have an inheritance class hierarchy , which has got a method overridden by its subclasses. Let us look at some sample code to see how this can be achieved using StackTraceElement and Throwable :

The base caller class:

public class CallerBase { 

public void methodC1() { 
new Callee().doSomething(); 
} 

public static void main(String[] args) { 
CallerBase caller = new CallerBase(); 
caller.methodC1(); 

caller = new CallerSub(); 
caller.methodC1(); 
} 
}

The subclass of the caller class:

public class CallerSub extends CallerBase { 

public void methodC1() { 
new Callee().doSomething(); 
} 
}

finally the important part of the code which determines who invoked it:

public class Callee { 

public void doSomething() { 
Throwable t = new Throwable(); 
StackTraceElement[] elements = t.getStackTrace(); 

String calleeMethod = elements[0].getMethodName(); 
String callerMethodName = elements[1].getMethodName(); 
String callerClassName = elements[1].getClassName(); 

System.out.println("CallerClassName=" + callerClassName + " , Caller method name: " + callerMethodName); 
System.out.println("Callee method name: " + calleeMethod); 
} 
}

If you run the class CallerBase then the output is:

CallerClassName=CallerBase , Caller method name: methodC1
Callee method name: doSomething
CallerClassName=CallerSub , Caller method name: methodC1
Callee method name: doSomething

-- from the author of the book "Java/J2EE Job Interview Companion" at http://www.lulu.com/java-success

[noelob]

What is your question exactly?

Kind regards,
Noel