Is there a better way than parsing a stack trace to get the currently running or calling method?

Question

The historical method has been to parse the output of Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace(), but there have been so many changes since Java 8 (like method handles) that I wasn't sure if a better way now exists.

If it helps, my specific goal here is to act based on annotations on the calling method, if possible.

Answer 1

Java 9 introduced the StackWalker API

It's best practice to store your StackWalker instance in a private static final field:

class SomeClass {
    private static final StackWalker SW = StackWalker.getInstance(StackWalker.Option.RETAIN_CLASS_REFERENCE);

    public someCallerSensitiveMethod() {
        Class<?> caller = SW.getCallerClass();
        // Do something with it, like check it's annotations
    }
}