Getting class name

Question

I am writing an administrator class that all other classes I am writing are meant to inherit from. In this case I want the classes to inherit a main method, and I am planning on implementing a factory as well. There are a few sysouts that I have to write that include various class names such as charcount, linecount and the such. For this I need to be able to get the current class name, since this method will be inherited by multiple classes. Is there a way to do this in java? You can find an example of the sysout I am looking to do below:

System.out.println("Usage: className <src>\n"); 

Thank you all in advance, any help is appreciated!

edit: Hey guys!

Very sorry I wasnt clear before, I'll show the entire code below and try to further explain my idea. So what I am doing is essentially making a main method that checks to see if a file exists, and if the file exists, it will try to execute a certain function (All this will be in the command line).I am practicing factory design patterns (something I've never done before). I will use the execute part of the main method to call on some factory (not yet made) to create objects of subclasses of administrator and return things like charcount in a file and linecount in a file. The above question refers to one part of this main method that will print the usage of the subclass. So for example, I will have charcount inherit from administrator because the process of checking the file and is in the main method of administrator, however when I print the usage message, I dont want it to print "Usage: Administrator ", but "Usage: charcount ". I hope that clears things up, and sorry again for how badly I explained it above, you can find what I have so far as code below:

public class Administrator 
{
    
    private static File srcFile = null; 
    private static String srcFilename = "<srcFilename>"; 
    
    
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {    
         
        
        //check the command line 
        if(args.length != 1) 
        { 
            System.out.println("Usage: charcount <src>\n"); 
            return;
        } 
        
        // Check if arguments are valid, if the srcFile exists, and if can create the dstFile.
        if (args[0] != null)
        { 
            //check <src> 
            srcFilename = args[0]; 
            System.out.println( ": srcFilename '" + srcFilename + "'"); 
            srcFile = new File(srcFilename); 
            if(!srcFile.canRead()) 
            { 
                System.out.println("charcount: cannot open srcFile '" + srcFilename + "'"); 
                return;
            }
        } 
        else 
        { 
            System.out.println("charcount: [OK] srcFilename = '" + srcFilename + "'"); 
            
        }  
    } 
    
    public static int execute() {return 0;}
    
}

Answer 1

You can do something like this:

System.out.println("Class name: " + getClass().getName());

Which will return foo.bar.Baz (assuming your class is named Baz and in package foo.bar)

Or you can System.out.println("Class name: " + getClass().getSimpleName());

Which will simply return 'Foo'

You might find this related question helpful: What is the difference between canonical name, simple name and class name in Java Class?

Edit: The question asks about doing this from the "main" method, which could be understood as public static void main(String[] args) or as the primary method in a given class hierarchy. Since the question goes on to discuss the method being inherited by multiple classes, I understood "main" as "primary". This answer wouldn't work from public static void main(String[] args) because getClass() is an instance method and can't be invoked from a static context.

Answer 2

Java Class class has some useful methods. You can use getClass().getSimpleName(). at runtime this method called based on object's type.

Answer 3

Try using this methods:

this.getClass().getCanonicalName() or this.getClass().getSimpleName().

If it's an anonymous class, you should use this.getClass().getSuperclass().getName()