Improving field get and set performance with ASM or Javassist

Question

I would like to avoid reflection in an open source project I am developing. Here I have classes like the following.

public class PurchaseOrder {

   @Property
   private Customer customer;

   @Property
   private String name;
}

I scan for the @Property annotation to determine what I can set and get from the PurchaseOrder reflectively. There are many such classes all using java.lang.reflect.Field.get() and java.lang.reflect.Field.set().

Ideally I would like to generate for each property an invoker like the following.

public interface PropertyAccessor<S, V> {
   public void set(S source, V value);
   public V get(S source);
}

Now when I scan the class I can create a static inner class of PurchaseOrder like so.

static class customer_Field implements PropertyAccessor<PurchaseOrder, Customer> {
   public void set(PurchaseOrder order, Customer customer) {
      order.customer = customer;
   }  
   public Customer get(PurchaseOrder order) {
      return order.customer;
   }
}

With these I totally avoid the cost of reflection. I can now set and get from my instances with native performance. Can anyone tell me how I would do this. A code example would be great. I have searched the net for a good example but can find nothing like this. The ASM and Javasist examples are pretty poor also.

The key here is that I have an interface that I can pass around. So I can have various implementations, perhaps one with Java Reflection as a default, one with ASM, and one with Javassist?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

ASM

Using ASMifierClassVisitor, you can see exactly what code you need to write to generate the inner classes:

ASMifierClassVisitor.main(new String[] { PurchaseOrder.customer_Field.class
    .getName() });

The rest is just determining what bits you need to parameterize in your generator code. Example output for PurchaseOrder$customer_Field which will become the file inject/PurchaseOrder$customer_Field.class:

public static byte[] dump () throws Exception {

  ClassWriter cw = new ClassWriter(0);
  FieldVisitor fv;
  MethodVisitor mv;
  AnnotationVisitor av0;

  cw.visit(V1_6, ACC_SUPER, "inject/PurchaseOrder$customer_Field",
      "Ljava/lang/Object;"+
      "Linject/PropertyAccessor<Linject/PurchaseOrder;Linject/Customer;>;", 
      "java/lang/Object",
      new String[] { "inject/PropertyAccessor" });
//etc

(I used "inject" as the package.)

You'll also have to create synthetic accessors using ASM's visitor classes:

{
mv = cw.visitMethod(ACC_STATIC + ACC_SYNTHETIC, "access$0", 
          "(Linject/PurchaseOrder;Linject/Customer;)V", null, null);
mv.visitCode();
mv.visitVarInsn(ALOAD, 0);
mv.visitVarInsn(ALOAD, 1);
mv.visitFieldInsn(PUTFIELD, "inject/PurchaseOrder",
          "customer", "Linject/Customer;");
mv.visitInsn(RETURN);
mv.visitMaxs(2, 2);
mv.visitEnd();
}
{
mv = cw.visitMethod(ACC_STATIC + ACC_SYNTHETIC, "access$1", 
          "(Linject/PurchaseOrder;)Linject/Customer;", null, null);
mv.visitCode();
mv.visitVarInsn(ALOAD, 0);
mv.visitFieldInsn(GETFIELD, "inject/PurchaseOrder", "
          customer", "Linject/Customer;");
mv.visitInsn(ARETURN);
mv.visitMaxs(1, 1);
mv.visitEnd();
}

See this project for an example of how to inject methods.

---

With these I totally avoid the cost of reflection.

Since this is all going to be done at runtime:

• there is an up-front cost to this parsing and code generation
• you'll need to discover and introspect these generated types somehow

Answer 2

An example using Javassist, however it does require that your properties have package level protection instead of be private

public class AccessorGenerator {

    private final ClassPool pool;

    public PropertyGenerator() {
        pool = new ClassPool();
        pool.appendSystemPath();
    }

    public Map<String, PropertyAccessor> createAccessors(Class<?> klazz) throws Exception {
        Field[] fields = klazz.getDeclaredFields();

        Map<String, PropertyAccessor> temp = new HashMap<String, PropertyAccessor>();
        for (Field field : fields) {
            PropertyAccessor accessor = createAccessor(klazz, field);
            temp.put(field.getName(), accessor);
        }

        return Collections.unmodifiableMap(temp);
    }

    private PropertyAccessor createAccessor(Class<?> klazz, Field field) throws Exception {
        final String classTemplate = "%s_%s_accessor";
        final String getTemplate = "public Object get(Object source) { return ((%s)source).%s; }";
        final String setTemplate = "public void set(Object dest, Object value) { return ((%s)dest).%s = (%s) value; }";

        final String getMethod = String.format(getTemplate, 
                                               klazz.getName(),
                                               field.getName());
        final String setMethod = String.format(setTemplate, 
                                               klazz.getName(), 
                                               field.getName(), 
                                               field.getType().getName());

        final String className = String.format(classTemplate, klazz.getName(), field.getName());

        CtClass ctClass = pool.makeClass(className);
        ctClass.addMethod(CtNewMethod.make(getMethod, ctClass));
        ctClass.addMethod(CtNewMethod.make(setMethod, ctClass));
        ctClass.setInterfaces(new CtClass[] { pool.get(PropertyAccessor.class.getName()) });
        Class<?> generated = ctClass.toClass();
        return (PropertyAccessor) generated.newInstance();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        AccessorGenerator generator = new AccessorGenerator();

        Map<String, PropertyAccessor> accessorsByName = generator.createAccessors(PurchaseOrder.class);

        PurchaseOrder purchaseOrder = new PurchaseOrder("foo", new Customer());

        accessorsByName.get("name").set(purchaseOrder, "bar");
        String name = (String) accessorsByName.get("name").get(purchaseOrder);
        System.out.println(name);
    }
}