Aspects with Annotations in Spring

Heres a quick example to show how annotations can be used as join points in AOP. The code below simply times the execution of any method with the anotation @Time on it.

1. Define an annotation that can be placed over a method to time

package com.rizvn.timer;

import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE })
public @interface Time {}

2. Define an aspect that will look for @Time annotation on any method. It will intercept the method in order to time it.

package com.rizvn.timer;

import org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Around;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
@Aspect
public class TimeAspect
{
  @Around("execution(@com.rizvn.timer.Time * *(..))")
  public Object time(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable
  {
    long start = System.nanoTime();
    Object result = pjp.proceed();
    long end= System.nanoTime();

    long duration = end - start;

    System.out.println("Duration: " + duration + "nano secs.");
    return result;
  }
}

3. Add the following to your config. Make sure to include the xmlns:aop namespace (line 5) and the aop schema locations (lines 11 & 12).

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
      xmlns:c="http://www.springframework.org/schema/c"
      xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
      xsi:schemaLocation="
      http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
         http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd">


    <!-- This enables aspects in the spring context -->
    <aop:aspectj-autoproxy />

</beans>

or use the @EnableAspectJAutoProxy if using spring 3.2's java config

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.EnableAspectJAutoProxy;

@Configuration
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy
public class AppConfig {
...

}