Java Get All Superclasses of a Class using Apache Commons Lang

This Java tutorial shows you how to get a list of all superclasses of a given Class object in Java using Apache Commons Lang library.

How to add Apache Commons Lang 3 library to your Java project

To use the Apache Commons Lang 3 library in the Gradle build project, add the following dependency into the build.gradle file.

implementation 'org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:3.12.0'

To use the Apache Commons Lang 3 library in the Maven build project, add the following dependency into the pom.xml file.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
  <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
  <version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>

To have more information about the Apache Commons Lang 3 library you can visit the library home page at commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/

How to get All Superclasses of a Class in Java

The Apache Commons Lang library provides the method ClassUtils.getAllSuperclasses() to return a List of Class objects, the list of superclasses of a given Class object. You can learn how to use this method in the following example code to get all superclasses of LinkedHashSet class.

GetAllSuperclasses.java

import org.apache.commons.lang3.ClassUtils;

import java.util.LinkedHashSet;
import java.util.List;

public class GetAllSuperclasses {
    public static void main(String... args) {
        // Get all supper classed of LinkedHashSet class
        List<Class<?>> listOfClasses = ClassUtils.getAllSuperclasses(LinkedHashSet.class);

        for(Class item : listOfClasses) {
            System.out.println(item);
        }
    }
}

class java.util.HashSet
class java.util.AbstractSet
class java.util.AbstractCollection
class java.lang.Object

Happy Coding 😊