Get parent class of a certain class

Question

Given a class Car that extends the class Vehicle that extends NSObject.

How is it possible to get programmatically the parent class Vehicle from the child class Car in Objective-C?

Answer 1

Use class_getSuperclass() function.

Class parentClass = class_getSuperclass([Car class]);

You need to import "objc/runtime.h" in order to use this function.

Also there is superclass method on NSObject

Class parentClass =  [Car superclass];

Answer 2

Just send the message superclass. You can then use the macro NSStringFromClass() if you need the name.