What is the application of the reflection mechanism in programming?

The reflection mechanism in programming allows a program to obtain information about its own structures (classes, methods, fields) during runtime and to dynamically change behavior. In Android and Java, this is often used for dynamically creating objects, invoking methods, accessing private fields, as well as for implementing flexible libraries such as serialization, Dependency Injection (DI), or ORM.

Example: using reflection, you can get a list of all methods of a class and invoke a specific method by name:

Class<?> clazz = MyClass.class;
Method method = clazz.getDeclaredMethod("myMethod", String.class);
method.setAccessible(true); // if the method is private
Object result = method.invoke(myObject, "parameter");

Thus, reflection extends the capabilities of dynamic program behavior but can also impact performance and security, so it should be used consciously.