Runtime Casting

Question

I have a hashtable with different objects types inside it. Since they are swing objects, all of them are handled by a single function.
Enumeration enum = hash.keys();
while( enum.hasMoreElements() )
     // The key is always a String, so a hard cast is acceptable
     String key = (String)enum.nextElement();
     Object val = hash.get(key);
     // Try Use Reflection to retrieve the class
     Class interfaceClass = Class.forName(val);    // ??
     panel.add( (interfaceClass)val  );            // ??
}What I would like to do is cast these objects without having to write a switch statment to delimit hard casts. The following code works, but since I have to hard code the answers is *obviously a poor way to do it.
Enumeration enum = hash.keys();
while( enum.hasMoreElements() )
     String key = (String)enum.nextElement();
     Object val = hash.get(key);
     // Use Reflection to retrieve the class
     Class interfaceClass = val.getClass();
     String className = interfaceClass.getName();
     if( className.endsWith("JButton") )
          panel.add( (JButton)val  );
     else if( className.endsWith("JCheckBox") )
          panel.add( (JCheckBox)val  );
}Any help with the dynamic casting problem would be appericated.
~Kullgen
(PS, After searching the forums for a solution, I find that when people ask this question they are invariably flamed for poor design. This is not a design question, but just a problem with having to use the clunky java swing. IMHO Swing was very poorly designed, and thus leaves itself open to the problems above. I want this to be a post about runtime casting, not about design)

Answer 1

Since all the has elements are Swing componets they are all instances
of java.awt.Component. So simply cast to that and everything will be
just fine and dandy. No need for lots of switch statements.
For example:
import java.util.*;
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class Kullgen1
     public static void main(String[] argv)
          Hashtable hash= new Hashtable();
          hash.put("Button", new JButton("Button"));
          hash.put("Label", new JLabel("Label"));
          hash.put("TextField", new JTextField("TextField"));
          JFrame frame= new JFrame();
          JPanel panel= new JPanel(new GridLayout(0,1));
          frame.getContentPane().add(panel);
          Iterator components= hash.values().iterator();
          while(components.hasNext())
               panel.add((Component) components.next());
          frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          frame.pack();
          frame.setVisible(true);
}