Creating software is no easy task and software development engineers are continuously striving to find ways to make their job simpler. Reflection is a concept in software engineering that helps address this challenge. In this post, we'll discuss a few of the basics of reflection, as well as look at some of the practical applications for it in software development.
Reflection is the process by which an object in a computer program can inspect, modify, or even create its own data and behavior. Put simply, reflection allows a program to look at itself and then make changes according to the data it sees. This type of self-modifying behaviour can be extremely powerful and can be utilized to make programming easier, faster, and more efficient.
One of the most common applications of reflection in software development is for getting information about code objects, such as functions and classes. With reflection, developers can query and introspect the code to find out what functions or classes exist and what they do. This can be helpful in finding bugs and making sure that code is running as expected. Reflection can also be used to create objects and invoke methods on existing objects, as well as various other uses.
A simple example of reflection in use is when we use reflection methods to access the context of an activity or fragment in an Android program. We can use these methods to determine the current orientation of the device and use these values to alter the behaviours of our app.
That said, reflection can also be used in software development for more complex tasks. For example, Java developers can use reflection to augment the way objects work. Using reflection, developers can add methods and fields to an existing object, allowing them to extend the functionality of existing objects or to set values or call methods of a class not available to them at compile time. This can be useful for making code more extensible and for avoiding tedious rewrite operations in larger systems.
Overall, reflection is a powerful concept in software development that can help developers become more efficient in their work. By allowing developers to query, introspect, and modify their code dynamically, reflection can make software development more efficient while also making sure that code is running as expected.