java.lang.reflect.Method.getGenericReturnType() Method Example

Description

The java.lang.reflect.Method.getGenericReturnType() method returns a Type object that represents the formal return type of the method represented by this Method object.

Declaration

Following is the declaration for java.lang.reflect.Method.getGenericReturnType() method.

public Type getGenericReturnType()

Returns

a Type object that represents the formal return type of the underlying method.

Exceptions

• GenericSignatureFormatError − if the generic method signature does not conform to the format specified in The Java Virtual Machine Specification.

• TypeNotPresentException − if any of the parameter types of the underlying method refers to a non-existent type declaration.

• MalformedParameterizedTypeException − if any of the underlying method's parameter types refer to a parameterized type that cannot be instantiated for any reason.

Example

The following example shows the usage of java.lang.reflect.Method.getGenericReturnType() method.

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import java.lang.reflect.Type;

public class MethodDemo {

   public static void main(String[] args) {

      Method[] methods = SampleClass.class.getMethods();
      Type returnType = methods[0].getGenericReturnType();
      System.out.println(returnType);
   }
}

class SampleClass {
   private String sampleField;

   public String getSampleField() {
      return sampleField;
   }

   public void setSampleField(String sampleField) {
      this.sampleField = sampleField; 
   } 
}

Let us compile and run the above program, this will produce the following result −

class java.lang.String