Reflective access to non-existent or not visible class member

Reports reflective access to fields and methods that don't exist or aren't visible.

Example:

  Field stringHashField() throws NoSuchFieldException {
    return String.class.getField("hash");
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  Field stringHashField() throws NoSuchFieldException {
    return String.class.getDeclaredField("hash");
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

JavaReflectionMemberAccess

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Reflective access

With a final class, it's clear if there is a field or method with the specified name in the class.

With non-final classes, it's possible that a subclass has a field or method with that name, so there could be false positives. Use the inspection's settings to get rid of such false positives everywhere or with specific classes.

New in 2017.2

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Reflective access to non-existent or not visible class member inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Exclude classes: Default value:
[java.lang.Object, java.lang.Throwable]
Check that field/method exists in non-final classes: Default value:
Selected

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection JavaReflectionMemberAccess

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025