Get Concrete Class name from Abstract Class

Question

In Java, inside an abstract class can I get the instance of the concrete class that extends it?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do this by calling this.getClass(). This will give you the Class instance for the runtime type of this.

If you just want the name of the class, you could use this.getClass().getName().

Lastly, there are also this.getClass().getSimpleName() and this.getClass().getCanonicalName(). I use the former all the time to print readable class names to log files and the like.