What are the interets of synthetic methods?
- by romaintaz
Problem
One friend suggested an interesting problem. Given the following code:
public class OuterClass {
private String message = "Hello World";
private class InnerClass {
private String getMessage() {
return message;
}
}
}
From an external class, how may I print the message variable content? Of course, changing the accessibility of methods or fields is not allowed.
(the source here, but it is a french blog)
Solution
The code to solve this problem is the following:
try {
Method m = OuterClass.class.getDeclaredMethod("access$000", OuterClass.class);
OuterClass outerClass = new OuterClass();
System.out.println(m.invoke(outerClass, outerClass));
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
Note that the access$000 method name is not really standard (even if this format is the one that is strongly recommanded), and some JVM will name this method access$0. Thus, a better solution is to check for synthetic methods:
Method method = null;
int i = 0;
while ((method == null) && (i < OuterClass.class.getDeclaredMethods().length)) {
if (OuterClass.class.getDeclaredMethods()[i].isSynthetic()) {
method = OuterClass.class.getDeclaredMethods()[i];
}
i++;
}
if (method != null) {
try {
System.out.println(method.invoke(null, new OuterClass()));
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
So the interesting point in this problem is to highlight the use of synthetic methods. With these methods, I can access a private field as it was done in the solution. Of course, I need to use reflection, and I think that the use of this kind of thing can be quite dangerous...
Question
What is the interest - for me, as a developer - of a synthetic method? What can be a good situation where using the synthetic can be useful?
