Sneaky dynamic method invoke – Part 2

Building a managed package but want to avoid dependencies? Apex has a few tricks up its sleeve to communicate across namespaces. Here’s the latest one:

Example callee code:

global class Extension implements StubProvider {

  /**
   * Example method
   */
  private Blob provideLicense() {
    return Crypto.generateAesKey(128);
  }

  /**
   * Example dispatcher
   */
  global Object handleMethodCall(Object stub, String method, Type returnType, List<Type> argTypes, List<String> argNames, List<Object> argValues) {
    if (method == 'provideLicense') return provideLicense();
    throw new StringException('method not implemented yet');
  }

}

Here’s what the calling code looks like:

Type reflector = Type.forName('pkg_ns.Extension');
StubProvider impl = (StubProvider)reflector.newInstance();
String license = impl.handleMethodCall(impl, 'provideLicense', String.class, null, null, null);

It works by using the StubProvider system interface as a shared entry point. The class to be executed is instrumented with handleMethodCall, which delegates to each method (or multiple methods!) you make available. This approach avoids:

• extension packages,
• compile-time binding to invoked code
• serializing the arguments or return value (per toString)

Another way to stay out of dependency hell.

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