How do you get a reference to the enclosing class from an anonymous inner class in Java? [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

Getting hold of the outer class object from the inner class object (7 answers)

Closed 4 years ago.

I'm currently creating an explicit reference to this in the outer class so that I have a name to refer to in the anonymous inner class. Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

I just found this recently. Use OuterClassName.this.

class Outer {
    void foo() {
        new Thread() {
            public void run() {
                Outer.this.bar();
            }
        }.start();
    }
    void bar() {
        System.out.println("BAR!");
    }
}

Updated If you just want the object itself (instead of invoking members), then Outer.this is the way to go.

Answer 2

Use EnclosingClass.this

Answer 3

You can still use Outer.class to get the class of the outer class object (which will return the same Class object as Outer.this.getClass() but is more efficient)

If you want to access statics in the enclosing class, you can use Outer.name where name is the static field or method.