JAVA Aspect Oriented Programming- Runtime Aspect Weaving and Class Loading time aspect weaving

Question

I came cross a article about AOP, there it is mentioned that Aspect weaving can happen during the compile time, class loading time and during runtime.

In java, I could imagine, rather understand, how aspect weaving would actually happens during compile time. Proxy class are generated during class compilation itself(with aspect enabled on project). Generated bytecode would have proxy code.

But I am still wondering what exactly (actually) happen, during class loading time weaving and runtime weaving. Does the proxy class gets generated while loading the class? Does aspect library add any programmatic instruction in .class (while compiling) file for proxy class generation?

Answer 1

Spring AOP actually uses Java Dynamic Proxies for interfaces and, if necessary, cglib for non-interface types. It only works for Spring Beans. Proxies are generated automatically for all methods matched by a so-called pointcut. This is done during wiring.

AspectJ however does not need or even use proxies, it directly generates byte code which is woven into the existing byte code. AspectJ is much more powerful and can do more than just method interception.

• For compile-time weaving (CTW) this is done by the AspectJ compiler ajc. Instead of native AspectJ syntax (which is a superset of Java) you can also use a Java annotation style way of defining aspects, often called the @AspectJ syntax. In this case you can compile the aspects with javac and use the aspect weaver in a separate build step. The result is basically the same. In both cases, during runtime you need a small AspectJ runtime library in order for the aspects to work as expected.
• The difference between CTW and LTW (load-time weaving) is that the weaving step is deferred until classloading time. In order to make this work you need a Java agent library, called the AspectJ weaver, on the JVM command line. Java agents are started before normal application classes are loaded and can thus influence classloading and instrument the loaded byte code as desired. This approach is also used by profiling tools or similar.
• So obviously LTW does not work with source code but class files, i.e. AspectJ can weave its aspect code into any regular Java class file. This can also be done before runtime, i.e. you can weave aspect code into an external library for which you do not have the source code, creating a new, modified version of it in order to save the time for LTW every time the library is loaded. This often is called binary weaving. With some extra knowledge it is even possible to weave aspect code into the JDK, i.e. by creating a modified rt.jar including aspect code. But this is nothing you normally do, I just wanted to mention that it is possible.