web development helpdesk

The StackTraceElement class can be used to get details about the call stack.

The following example shows how it can be used to view the call stack and determine where a method was called from.

public class WhoCalledMe
{

	public static void main(String[] args)
	{
		f();
	}

	public static void f()
	{
		g();
	}

	public static void g()
	{
		showCallStack();
		System.out.println();
		System.out.println(
			"g() was called by "+whoCalledMe());
	}

	public static String whoCalledMe()
	{
		StackTraceElement[] stackTraceElements =
			Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();
		StackTraceElement caller = stackTraceElements[4];
	    String classname = caller.getClassName();
	    String methodName = caller.getMethodName();
	    int lineNumber = caller.getLineNumber();
		return classname+"."+methodName+":"+lineNumber;
	}

	public static void showCallStack()
	{
		StackTraceElement[] stackTraceElements =
			Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();
		for (int i=2 ; i<stackTraceElements.length; i++)
		{
			StackTraceElement ste = stackTraceElements[i];
		    String classname = ste.getClassName();
		    String methodName = ste.getMethodName();
		    int lineNumber = ste.getLineNumber();
		    System.out.println(
		    	classname+"."+methodName+":"+lineNumber);
		}
	}
}

written by objects \\ tags: call stack, StackTraceElement, thread dump