Can the Pluggable Annotation Processor API retrieve source code comments?

Question

I am using the pluggable annotation processing api withing Java6+ to automatically create some deployment XML files. Part of these XML files contains a description of the object. The description is ALWAYS the same content as the Javadoc associated with the class itself. I could force the comment to be a field of the @Block annotation, but that duplicates the information. Is there any way during annotation processing to get the contents of the class/type comment?

In this example, I want to get "A nice description of my block" during annotation processing.

/**
* A nice description of my block
**/
@Block
public class CustomBlock {
}

Answer 1

I seem to always find the answer right after I post on SO.

For future reference, here is the solution

import java.util.Set;
import javax.annotation.processing.AbstractProcessor;
import javax.annotation.processing.RoundEnvironment;
import javax.lang.model.element.TypeElement;

public class CustomAnnotationProcessor extends AbstractProcessor
{
    @Override
    public boolean process(Set<? extends TypeElement> set, RoundEnvironment re)
    {
 
        // use the protected member, processingEnv
        
        String comment = processingEnv.getElementUtils().getDocComment(anyElement);
    }
}