Return Name of class from instance of that class

Question

I need a quick approach to something like:

  MyClass mc = new MyClass();
  String theName = ClassNameProvider.getName(mc); // returns 'MyClass'

Answer 1

I think your requirement falls in the gap for apex but we have the ability to do one of following things:

We can retrieve the name of an object using code such as

String name = MyClass.class.getName(); //returns MyClass

We can check whether the instance of a particular type using

Boolean isSame = mc instanceof MyClass; //returns true

Or if we want to get the name from an instance of an unknown type we can do:

String name = String.valueOf(mc).split(':')[0];//returns MyClass

Hopefully one of those covers your need. See the discussion to a similar question here for more info.

Answer 2

This is an interesting hack as posted on the idea Method to get the Type of an Object (also Primitive Type not only SObject) by Robert Strunk:

public static String getObjectType(Object obj){

    String result = 'DateTime';
    try{
        DateTime typeCheck = (DateTime)obj;
    }
    catch(System.TypeException te){

        String message = te.getMessage().substringAfter('Invalid conversion from runtime type ');
        result = message.substringBefore(' to Datetime');
    }

    return result;
}

The parse conversion exception approach overcomes the caveat that using String.valueOf(obj).split(':')[0] does not work in scenarios where the Apex class' toString() method has been overriden and returns a value in a different format, as pointed out in this comment.

Answer 3

To answer the title of the question: to get the name of the class from within any class use this:

String CurrentClassName = String.valueOf(this).substring(0,String.valueOf(this).indexOf(':'));