A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
It should be possible to create an instance of an object without calling constructors or field initialisation.

Within Sun's classes this is already possible by using:
ReflectionFactory#newConstructorForSerialization()

This method or a similar should also be added to the J2SE standard so it's reliable to be used for all JDKs of all vendors.


JUSTIFICATION :
Persistence systems need a way to bypass calling constructors and field initialisation so they can *always* create an instance of any object without risking side effects from constructor code.

We would need this for db4o:
http://www.db4o.com

I have talked to maintainers of other persistence projects (for example: Klaus Wuestefeld / Prevayler) and apparently every persistence system would require this functionality.

JDO could also benefit.






CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
Below is code that works on Sun's 1.4 and 1.5 JDK.

import java.lang.reflect.*;

import sun.reflect.*;

public class NoConst {

    private NoConst(){
        throw new RuntimeException("No we never want this object.");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        Constructor oc = Object.class.getDeclaredConstructor(new Class[0]);
        ReflectionFactory factory = ReflectionFactory.getReflectionFactory();
        Class clazz = NoConst.class;
        Constructor c = factory.newConstructorForSerialization(clazz,oc);
        NoConst ncc = (NoConst) c.newInstance(null);
        System.out.println(ncc);
    }

    public String toString(){
        return "This is a NoConstructorCalled object";
    }
}
###@###.### 2005-1-24 12:24:35 GMT