How to get the Array Class for a given Class in Java?

Question

I have a Class variable that holds a certain type and I need to get a variable that holds the corresponding array class. The best I could come up with is this:

Class arrayOfFooClass = java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance(fooClass, 0).getClass();

Is there a way to do this without creating the new instance?

Answer 1

If you don't want to create an instance, you could create the canonical name of the array manually and get the class by name:

// Replace `String` by your object type.
Class stringArrayClass = Class.forName(
    "[L" + String.class.getCanonicalName() + ";"
);

But Jakob Jenkov argues in his blog that your solution is the better one, because it doesn't need fiddling with strings.

Class stringArrayClass = Array.newInstance(String.class, 0).getClass();