Access Elements of Reflected ArrayList

[Tim Muller]

hey there
I have a reflected a class to get a list of it's vars and vals... I've done this with If-statements looping through each var. I can get vals for the other kinds of vars:

if (type.equals("class java.io.File"))
{
try {
Object tween = field.get(o);
File castFile = (File)(tween);
val = castFile.getAbsolutePath();
type = "File";
} catch (Exception ee) {}
} else if (type.equals("class [Ljava.lang.String;")) {
try {
Object object = field.get(o);
String[] backToStringArray = (String[])(object);
val = "";
for (int i = 0; i < backToStringArray.length; i++)
{
val += backToStringArray[i] + ", ";
}
val = val.substring(0, val.length() - 2);
val = "{" + val + "}";
type = "String[]";
} catch (Exception ee) {}
} else if (type.equals("class java.lang.String")) {
try {
Object obj = field.get(o);
val = obj.toString();
type = "String";
} catch (Exception ee) {}
} else if (type.equals("class java.util.ArrayList")) {
val = "foo"; // HERE IS WHERE I NEED TO FILL IN
type = "ArrayList<?>";
} else {
try {
Object other = field.get(o);
val = type;
} catch (Exception ee) {}
}

The solution to this problem with a String[] was casting it and creating a new String[]... but that didn't work for an ArrayList, maybe because I can't know what kind of Objects are stored in the ArrayList... but I tried casting them as ArrayList<String> and ArrayList<File> but in both cases, no matter which kind of Object the ArrayList really held, neither way worked.. How do I get the elements stored in the ArrayList?