Getting all instances of a class

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Is there a simple way of obtaining all object instances of a specific class in Java

In java, is there any possible way to get all the instances of a certain class?

Answer 1

You can use a Factory static initializer when you instantiate your class (Singleton pattern) and then add each generated instance in the factory constructor to a List ...

Something like this :

  class MyObject {
    private static List instances = new ArrayList();

    public static MyObject createMyObject() {
    MyObject o = new MyObject();
    instances.add(new java.lang.ref.WeakReference(o));
    return o;
    }

    public static List getInstances() {
    return instances;
    }

    private MyObject() {
    // Not allowed 
    }
  }