Use of concrete class

Reports usages of concrete classes, rather than interfaces. Such declarations may represent a failure of abstraction and may make testing more difficult.

Declarations whose classes come from system or third-party libraries will not be reported by this inspection. Casts, instanceofs, and local variables are not reported in equals() method implementations. Also, casts are not reported in clone() method implementations.

Example:

  interface Entity {}
  class EntityImpl implements Entity {}

  void processObject(Object obj) {
    // warning: instanceof of the concrete class
    if (obj instanceof EntityImpl) {
      // warning: cast to the concrete class,
      // rather than the interface
      processEntity((EntityImpl)obj);
    }
  }
  // warning: parameter of concrete class
  void processEntity(EntityImpl obj) {
  }

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.

UseOfConcreteClass

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 | Abstraction issues

Use the Ignore abstract class type option to ignore casts to abstract classes.

Use the subsequent options to control contexts where the problem is reported.

Inspection ID: UseOfConcreteClass

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Use of concrete class inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Ignore abstract class type

Option ID:

ignoreAbstractClasses

Default value:

Not selected

Ignore Java records

Option ID:

ignoreRecords

Default value:

Selected

Report method return type

Option ID:

reportMethodReturns

Default value:

Selected

Report method parameter type

Option ID:

reportMethodParameters

Default value:

Selected

Report local variable type

Option ID:

reportLocalVariables

Default value:

Selected

Report static field type

Option ID:

reportStaticFields

Default value:

Selected

Report instance field type

Option ID:

reportInstanceFields

Default value:

Selected

Report type used in instanceof, patterns, or getClass() comparison

Option ID:

reportInstanceOf

Default value:

Selected

Report type used in cast expression

Option ID:

reportCast

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 UseOfConcreteClass

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

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3, Qodana for JVM 2025.3,

Last modified: 03 December 2025