I have and followed several Annotation Processing Tool (APT) guides (such as 1 and 2) on the Internet and have managed to get it working in compiler/ build time, and even got it working in Eclipse.
Is there a way I can use APT in run time to get a list of Types (Classes) using my annotation.
I wrote something like:
@SupportedAnnotationTypes("com.domain.MyAnnotation")
public class MyAbstractProcessor extends AbstractProcessor {
public static Map<Element, MyAnnotation> patches = new HashMap<Element, MyAnnotation>();
@Override
public boolean process(final Set<? extends TypeElement> annotations, final RoundEnvironment roundEnvironment) {
// Get all classes that has the annotation
Set<? extends Element> classElements = roundEnvironment.getElementsAnnotatedWith(MyAnnotation.class);
// For each class that has the annotation
for (final Element classElement : classElements) {
patches.put(classElement, annotation);
So MyAbstractProcessor.patches would be populate with a list of classes using the annotation. A noble idea, apart from the flaw that this APT is executing at build time, and not run time.
Is it even possible to use APT in run time?
Or am I using the wrong frameworks to get what I want?
You can access the annotations at run time using reflection - getAnnotations.
To get a list of classes (in your classpath) using your annotation, you could - at runtime - iterate through all the classes testing if they have that annotation.
Alternatively - at build time - you could construct a class with a list of classes.
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