Re: Class casting question

[Cynthia Jeness <cjeness@bellsouth.net>]

Tracy,

You can construct the correct class type in advance and then pass a 
reference to this type into your parsing routine to get it populated.

Cynthia Jeness

Tracy McAbee wrote:

>I have a utility class with a method that parses an XML string (and one that
>parses an XML file) and returns a superclass which holds the parsed
>information.  I'd like to use this utility for sub-classes as well, without
>writing new methods to return each sub-class.  Can it be done?  I know I get
>a ClassCastException at runtime when I use::
>
>Sub sub = (Sub)UtilXML.parseXMLSTRING();
>
>which makes sense.  There's got to be a better way, but I'm having a hard
>time finding it.
>
>Here's an example of the classes and utility class to which I'm referring:
>
>public class Super (
>  // holds parsed values
>)
>
>public class Sub extends Super (
>  // sub-class of Super
>)
>
>public class UtilXML {
>  public static Super parseXMLFILE(String fileName, String endTag);
>  public static Super parseXMLSTRING(String xml, String endTag);
>)
>
>Is there a proper way to deal with this situation?  Just trying to see if
>anyone has some ideas...
>
>Thanks.
>
>Tracy McAbee
>
>
>  
>