How to get an instance of my object's parent

Question

Is there a way in Java to get an instance of my object's parent class from that object?

ex.

public class Foo extends Bar {

     public Bar getBar(){
          // code to return an instance of Bar whose members have the same state as Foo's
     }

}

Solution

There's no built-in way to do this. You can certainly write a method that will take a Foo and create a Bar that's been initialized with the relevant properties.

  public Bar getBar() {
       Bar bar = new Bar();
       bar.setPropOne(this.getPropOne());
       bar.setPropTwo(this.getPropTwo());
       return bar;
  }

On the other hand, what inheritance means is that a Foo is a Bar, so you could just do

 public Bar getBar() {
      return this;
   }

Comments

[Erick Robertson]

Yes, all you have to do is write the method how you want it to work. If you just wanted it to return this;, then you should just do Bar bar = foo; You don't need a method to do that.

[Jacob Mattison]

It's not unreasonable to have a method that "casts" a Foo to a Bar as part of an API, say if you want certain clients to use your Foo only as if it were a Bar.