Cast a generic object

Question

Hi how do you cast a generic object.
For example I have a class GenericModel which can be either a movie or a director however when I wish to print out any awards that either a director or a movie has, I need to cast a generic variable (gM) to either a movie or a director something like this ...
try {
GenericModel d = (Director) gM;
} if that fails do this{
GenericModel m = (Movie) gM;
}catch (Exception e){
Or any other way that works.
most appreciated

Answer 1

Huh? I don't see why you necessarily need to cast anything and certainly not to base types such as Director or Movie.
Also, the "try and if it fails try something else' pattern can be grossly inefficient.
I wish to print out any awards that either a director or a movie hasThen your Director and Movie objects both need a printAwards() method; they also need to be sub-classes of a common class (or implement a common interface) that has all the behaviors you want to be in common.
If that common class is GenericModel, then you would merely do:
  gM.printAwards();If that common class is something else, lets call it FilmObject, then you would need to cast your gM object to execute printAwards(), as so:
if ( gM instanceof FilmObject )
  ( (FilmObject) gM).printAward();
}This is really more of a basic Java issue that has nothing to do with JDBC or transactions; if you have followup questions, please ask them in another forum, not here.