Instanciate generic subclass of an abstract class

Question

Hello,
I'm writing a litle file manager API for my application, organised like a Database: a table filled by records.
I want my table to be able to be able to manage different types of records (but one record type by table!), so I have this hierarchy:
the abstract record class:
public abstract class Record {
     public Record() {
     public abstract void readFrom(DataInput in, int length) throws IOException;
     public abstract void writeTo(DataOutput out) throws IOException;
     public abstract int prepareToWrite();
}the abstract atomic record class, extending the abstract record class:
public abstract class AtomicRecord<T> extends Record {
     public AtomicRecord() {
     public AtomicRecord(T value) {
          super();
     public abstract T getValue();
     public abstract void setValue(T value);     
}and, for example, the StringRecord class:
public class StringRecord extends AtomicRecord<String> {
     code doesn't matter.
}now, I want to make a table of generic records:
public class RandomRecordAccessAppendableFileTable<RecordType extends Record>{
     public final RecordType getRecord(long id) throws IOException {
          RecordType record = new RecordType();
}problem: the RecordType is obviously not instanciable, as it extends Record, and not StringRecord. But I still want to instanciate a new StringRecord from a RandomRecordAccessAppendableFileTable<StringRecord> and a FooRecord from a RandomRecordAccessAppendableFileTable<FooRecord>.
Is there a way I can do this?
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

This is just my opinion, so you might ignore it: The design you are targeting is a result of misunderstanding what Generics are for and what Generics may provide in their current state. Their only purpose is to provide compile-time type safety. Creating instances the way you want to do seems more runtime focused, i.e., when generic information is gone.
Maybe, you should consider passing a factory at construction time that enables to create a record of a specific type. Using the class object requires reflection, which will introduce implicit contracts to record classes and potential runtime failures.