How to use custom type annotations in Java

Question

Java 8 has feature called Type annotations (JSR 308). I would like to use it for simple Object to Object mapper framework. I would like define annotation @ExpectedType like this

@Target({ElementType.TYPE_PARAMETER, ElementType.TYPE_USE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface ExpectedType {
    public Class<?> value();
}

And then use it in my code like this:

public class SomeServiceImpl() {
    public @ExpectedType(ObjectA_DTO.class) IObjectA doSomething(@ExpectedType(ObjectA_Entity.class) IObjectA obj) {
        return (ObjectA_Entity) obj; // it's correct
    }
}

IObjectA is an interface implemented by classes ObjectA_DTO and ObjectA_Entity. The service I would like to use this way:

// it's correct
assert someService.doSomething(new ObjectA_DTO()).getClass() == ObjectA_DTO.class;

I would like change call of SomeServiceImpl methods to use Object mapper. It could be achieved by generated code using JSR 269 or by AOP.

The problem is I wrote simple annotations processor and it doesn't handle type annotations at all. The source of simple annotations processor looks like this:

@SupportedAnnotationTypes("*")
@SupportedSourceVersion(SourceVersion.RELEASE_8)
public class SimpleAnnotationsProcessor extends AbstractProcessor {

    public boolean process(Set<? extends TypeElement> annotations, RoundEnvironment roundEnv) {
        Messager messager = processingEnv.getMessager();
        try {
            for (TypeElement e : annotations) {
                messager.printMessage(Diagnostic.Kind.NOTE, e.toString());
                for (Element elem : roundEnv.getElementsAnnotatedWith(e)) {
                    messager.printMessage(Diagnostic.Kind.NOTE, elem.toString());
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Any ideas how to use or how to access type annotations by SimpleAnnotationsProcessor? Usage of Pluggable Annotation Processing API is not necessary for me I think it would has better performance than Java reflection. Anyway I don't know how to access type annotation via Java Reflection too.

Answer 1

I'm not sure I understand what you try to achieve, but here is an example how you can access your annotations with the Java reflection api:

package test;

import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;
import java.lang.reflect.AnnotatedType;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;

public class TypeParameterTest {

    @Target({ElementType.TYPE_PARAMETER, ElementType.TYPE_USE})
    @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
    public @interface ExpectedType {
        public Class<?> value();
    }

    public static interface IObjectA {}

    public static class ObjectA_DTO implements IObjectA {}

    public static class ObjectA_Entity implements IObjectA {}

    public static class SomeServiceImpl {
        public @ExpectedType(ObjectA_DTO.class) IObjectA doSomething(@ExpectedType(ObjectA_Entity.class) IObjectA obj) {
            return (ObjectA_Entity) obj;
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws NoSuchMethodException, SecurityException {
        Method m = SomeServiceImpl.class.getMethod("doSomething", IObjectA.class);
        AnnotatedType returnType = m.getAnnotatedReturnType();
        Annotation returnTypeAnnotation = returnType.getAnnotation(ExpectedType.class);
        System.out.println(returnTypeAnnotation);

        AnnotatedType[] parameters = m.getAnnotatedParameterTypes();
        for (AnnotatedType p : parameters) {
            Annotation parameterAnnotation = p.getAnnotation(ExpectedType.class);
            System.out.println(parameterAnnotation);
        }
    }
}

The output looks like this:

@test.TypeParameterTest$ExpectedType(value=class test.TypeParameterTest$ObjectA_DTO)
@test.TypeParameterTest$ExpectedType(value=class test.TypeParameterTest$ObjectA_Entity)

Note though, that not all possible type annotations are accessible through the reflection api, but you can always read them from the byte code if necessary (see my answer here).