Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition

Name

Method

Synopsis

This class represents a method. Instances of Method are obtained by calling the getMethod( ) and related methods of java.lang.Class. Method implements the Member interface, so you can use the methods of that interface to obtain the method name, modifiers, and declaring class. In addition, getReturnType( ) , getParameterTypes( ), and getExceptionTypes( ) also return important information about the represented method.

Perhaps most importantly, the invoke( ) method allows the method represented by the Method object to be invoked with a specified array of argument values. If any of the arguments are of primitive types, they must be converted to their corresponding wrapper object types in order to be passed to invoke( ). If the represented method is an instance method (i.e., if it is not static), the instance on which it should be invoked must also be passed to invoke( ). The return value of the represented method is returned by invoke( ). If the return value is a primitive value, it is first converted to the corresponding wrapper type. If the invoked method causes an exception, the Throwable object it throws is wrapped within the InvocationTargetException that is thrown by invoke( ).

In Java 5.0, Method implements GenericDeclaration to support reflection on the type variables defined by generic methods and AnnotatedElement to support reflection on method annotations. Additionally, getParameterAnnotations( ) supports reflection on method parameter annotations. ...