Declare Annotation

Declare Annotation
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Declare Annotation

AspectJ 5 supports a new kind of declare statement, declare annotation. This takes different forms according to the recipient of the annotation: declare @type for types, declare @method for methods, declare @constructor for constructors, and declare @field for fields. declare @package may be supported in a future release.

The general form is:

 	declare @<kind> : ElementPattern : Annotation ;

Where annotation is a regular annotation expression as defined in the Java 5 language. If the annotation has the @Target meta-annotation, then the elements matched by ElementPattern must be of the kind specified by the @Target annotation.

ElementPattern is defined as follows:

 	 ElementPattern := TypePattern |
 	 MethodPattern |
 	 ConstructorPattern |
 	 FieldPattern

The following examples illustrate the use of declare annotation.

declare @type : org.xyz.model..* : @BusinessDomain ;: All types defined in a package with the prefix org.xyz.model have the @BusinessDomain annotation.
declare @method : public * BankAccount+.*(..) : @Secured(role="supervisor"): All public methods in BankAccount and its subtypes have the annotation @Secured(role="supervisor").
declare @constructor : BankAccount+.new(..) : @Secured(role="supervisor"): All constructors in BankAccount and its subtypes have the annotation @Secured(role="supervisor").
declare @field : * DAO+.* : @Persisted;: All fields defined in DAO or its subtypes have the @Persisted annotation.

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