Any Java built in function to get the Class type corresponding to primitive

Question

I know it sounds strange but basically I have a Class and a String (I'm reading values from an XML file).
If the Class is a primitive type (boolean, byte, char, short, int, long, float, and double) I would have to convert the String into the corresponding types.
So I know how to do stuff like
Integer.parseInt("22");but for all the primitive types is there some method where I can simply get a way to do that without writing a whole bunch of if statements?

Answer 1

You could set up a class to parse your String. You could check to see if it contains a decimal point, if so then you check to see if it is less than float.MAX_VALUE etc same for the Integer family and you could use equals method to check if it is true or false.
one other way would be to use parseInt etc and catch exceptions if there is an error, this is a bad idea though and a dirty way to do things.
As suggested, maybe you have some idea of what data type your expecting and can limit the amount of parsing you have to do. Another way is to group all numeric values as doubles.
You could start with something like this adding other methods checking the max value of the data types.
public class StringParser
     public static void main(String[] args)
          String test = "1.0";
          System.out.println(containsDecimal(test));
          if (containsDecimal(test))
               decimalSizeFinder(test);
          else
               integerSizeFinder(test);
     static boolean containsDecimal(String input)
          for(int i=0; i<input.length(); i++)
               if (input.charAt(i) =='.')
                    return true;
          return false;
     static void integerSizeFinder(String input)
          long value = Long.parseLong(input);
          if(value <=Byte.MAX_VALUE)
               byte b = (byte)value;
          else if(value <= Short.MAX_VALUE)
               short s = (short)value;
          else if(value <=Integer.MAX_VALUE)
                int i = (int)value;
          //etc
        //Add code to assign the value to a variable someplace
     static void decimalSizeFinder(String input)
          double value = Double.parseDouble(input);
          if(value <=Float.MAX_VALUE)
               float f = (float)value;
       //Add code to assign the value to a variable someplace
}Message was edited by:
kikemelly
Message was edited by:
kikemelly