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I'm looking for a way to get the name of an object instance at run-time. Is it possible to to determine the class name (as a string) of an instance? i.e. is there an Apex equivalent of the Java myInstance.getClass().getName() or any tricks to achieve just that?

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String.valueOf(myInstance) will get you pretty close - works with built in classes too... class MyClass {} System.debug(String.valueOf(new MyClass())); //MyClass:[] System.debug(String.valueOf(new PageReference(''))); //System.PageReference[] – user320 Jan 16 at 16:36
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Yes - thanks, only trouble is with that if someone has overridden the toString() method in the class it may return something other than the class name, i.e. you can't always rely on it. – Phil Hawthorn Jan 16 at 16:40
I thought you owned all the classes :P – user320 Jan 16 at 16:56
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@user320 - lol, yes I do and I know that I have overridden toString() (for a good reason too) and that it won't work in my use case. – Phil Hawthorn Jan 16 at 17:05

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up vote 4 down vote accepted

instanceOf verifies at runtime whether an object is actually an instance of a class...but you would have to write the conditions to check for them all. Also getSObjectType will describe an sObject.

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Thanks, actually I've just realised that since I own all of the classes I'm interested in I can implement my own getName() method. – Phil Hawthorn Oct 16 '12 at 19:24

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