Runtime type of Collection contents?

Question

I'm pretty certain I know the answer to this question, but anyway:
In a JavaBean editor, one property of the bean may be a collection of (potentially editable) beans. To edit the property I can display the appropriate editor if I can determine the type of the bean in the collection. A dirty but effective solution is to sample the collection and see what's actually in it. But in the case of an empty collection that isn't possible. (One function of the editor is to add a new bean to the collection.)
It seems that my only alternative is myCollection.getClass().getTypeParameters(), which tells you what the parameters were when the type was declared, e.g. for Vector<E>, "E", which obviously isn't any help, although it is consonant with the rule that the type parameter "disappears at runtime". (In other words, that Java is a statically typed language.)
I just want to confirm that I'm not missing something.
(Btw, a potential, though labor-intensive, solution is to set the collection element type in a BeanInfo attribute. So it's not like this is a dead end. I just want to confirm that I'm understanding it correctly.)
TIA

Answer 1

AH HA! It works, but don't ask me why (yet). Here's some test code, using a Method rather than a Field since accessor methods are available through Introspection while Fields aren't:
public class ATestBean {
    public static void main ( final String[] args ) throws Throwable
        ATestBean bean = new ATestBean();
    public ATestBean ( ) throws Throwable {  super();
        Method m = getClass().getDeclaredMethod("getCollection", new Class[0] );
        Class<?> c = getClassType( m );
    public Collection<AConcreteClass> getCollection()  {
        return null;
    public Class<?> getClassType(final Method meth ) throws Throwable {
        Type type = meth.getGenericReturnType();
        String strType = null;
        if (type instanceof ParameterizedType) {
            String actual = Arrays.toString( ((ParameterizedType)type).getActualTypeArguments() );
               // actual <- "[class com.x.y.z.AConcreteClass]"
            strType = actual.substring( 7, actual.length()-1 );
        if (strType != null) {
            Class<?> klass = Class.forName(strType);
            return klass;
        return null;
}Learn something new every day. Thanks.
Hmmm, looks like Introspector is due for an update...