Reflection analysis for java

TL;DR: A static analysis algorithm is proposed that uses points-to information to approximate the targets of reflective calls as part of call graph construction and is effective for resolving most reflective calls without any user input.

Abstract: Reflection has always been a thorn in the side of Java static analysis tools. Without a full treatment of reflection, static analysis tools are both incomplete because some parts of the program may not be included in the application call graph, and unsound because the static analysis does not take into account reflective features of Java that allow writes to object fields and method invocations. However, accurately analyzing reflection has always been difficult, leading to most static analysis tools treating reflection in an unsound manner or just ignoring it entirely. This is unsatisfactory as many modern Java applications make significant use of reflection. In this paper we propose a static analysis algorithm that uses points-to information to approximate the targets of reflective calls as part of call graph construction. Because reflective calls may rely on input to the application, in addition to performing reflection resolution, our algorithm also discovers all places in the program where user-provided specifications are necessary to fully resolve reflective targets. As an alternative to user-provided specifications, we also propose a reflection resolution approach based on type cast information that reduces the need for user input, but typically results in a less precise call graph. We have implemented the reflection resolution algorithms described in this paper and applied them to a set of six large, widely-used benchmark applications consisting of more than 600,000 lines of code combined. Experiments show that our technique is effective for resolving most reflective calls without any user input. Certain reflective calls, however, cannot be resolved at compile time precisely. Relying on a user-provided specification to obtain a conservative call graph results in graphs that contain 1.43 to 6.58 times more methods that the original. In one case, a conservative call graph has 7,047 more methods than a call graph that does not interpret reflective calls. In contrast, ignoring reflection leads to missing substantial portions of the application call graph.