This document is not meant as an introduction to the Java programming language. It is instead meant to give guidance and working examples for experienced Java programmers desiring to learn more about the capabilities of the current Java Reflection API.

The included source code examples make wide use of enhancements such as enhanced for loops, auto-boxing / auto-unboxing, typesafe enums, varargs and generics that appear in the Java 1.5 release. Readers should not only be familiar with these enhancements to fully understand the examples but also must have JDK 1.5 or higher available if they wish to compile and execute them.