Today I had another interesting task – to make splash screen window be always on top of everything else on the screen. Yes, and it’s all in Java. I know that Java 1.5.0+ already has a nice method to accomplish this – setAlwaysOnTop(boolean) – but what about our 1.4.2 compatibility? I wasn’t able to find any methods for doing this in 1.4.x and decided to add support at least for our users at 1.5.x . The next question was how to call this method without breaking compatibility with 1.4.x?

Sometime I get really scared of things I come up to. The approach I took here is based on our ability to query meta-data for everything in Java. I decided that I could scan a given class for a method required and if it’s there, to call it. Here’s what I wanted the invokation to look like:

RTUtils.callIfPresent(window, "setAlwaysOnTop", true);

I guess, that everything is clear to everyone. If method setAlwaysOnTop(boolean) is present in the class of window object then call it. And here’s the implementation of the method:

public static void callIfPresent(Object obj, String methodName, boolean param) {

Class clazz = obj.getClass(); Method method = null;

try { method = clazz.getDeclaredMethod(methodName, new Class[] { Boolean.TYPE }); } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) { }

if (method != null) { try { method.invoke(obj, new Object[] { Boolean.valueOf(param) }); } catch (Exception e) { LOG.log(Level.SEVERE, "Failed to invoke " + "detected method (" + methodName + ")", e); } } }

In the first part we try to find a method with the given name. If the method is there, we continue with calling it. If it isn’t, well, that’s OK. I don’t see any complications here, do you?

… and it works like charm!