Did you ever try to create an instance of a class with a protected constructor from outside its package?
I ran into this need when working with JPA-Entities of which i wanted to know initial field values. (yeah, i know. kind of black magic...)
It is actually easier, than getting protected Fields:
public static <T> T newInstance(final Class<T> c)
{
try
{
Constructor<T> constructor = c.getDeclaredConstructor(new Class[] {});
if (constructor != null)
{
constructor.setAccessible(true);
return constructor.newInstance((Object[]) null);
}
else
{
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Cannot find empty Contructor for class '" + c.getName() + "'");
}
}
catch (SecurityException e)
{
throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
}
catch (IllegalArgumentException e)
{
throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
}
catch (InstantiationException e)
{
throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
}
catch (IllegalAccessException e)
{
throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
}
catch (InvocationTargetException e)
{
throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
}
catch (NoSuchMethodException e)
{
throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
}
}
