Juixe Techknow

Here is a Java certification sort of question. Inside a nested inner class, how do you refer to the containing outer class?

public class MyClass {
  private String outerClassField = "some value";

  public void outerClassMethod() {
    someObject.addMyListener(new MyListener() {
      public void processEvent(MyEvent e) {
        // How do you access the variable outerClassField?
      }
    });
  }
}

You can’t use the this keyword because that will reference the inner class! The only way I know about, and that I have used before, is to use the class name. Such as the following example.

public class MyClass {
  private String outerClassField = "some value";

  public void outerClassMethod() {
    someObject.addMyListener(new MyListener() {
      public void processEvent(MyEvent e) {
        MyClass.this.outherClassField;
      }
    });
  }
}