Class type in java -spring mongodb source code

July 27, 2023

I was going through the source code of Spring-MongoDB project. Here https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-mongodb/blob/main/spring-data-mongodb/src/main/java/org/springframework/data/mongodb/core/aggregation/TypedAggregation.java

I found a Type called Class like below

private final Class<I> inputType;

I became curious as to what is this Class type , I looked up if there is any keyword of java which pertains to any Type Class, I haven’t found any, Then I looked upon in the package if there is a Interface or Class of with name

Class

But I haven’t found any, Those are the only possibilities of my set of assumptions I can make. Can someone help with what is Class here?

>Solution :

The class Class refers to the representation of a Java class at runtime. It is a fundamental part of the Java reflection API, which allows you to examine and interact with the structure and behavior of classes and objects dynamically, at runtime.

The class Class is part of the java.lang package and is itself a class. It provides various methods that allow you to access information about a class, such as its name, modifiers, fields, methods, constructors, superclasses, interfaces, annotations, etc.

For example:

Class<String> clazz = String.class;
System.out.println(clazz.getName());       // Output: java.lang.String
System.out.println(clazz.getSimpleName()); // Output: String

Check this out: