Spring pointcut for abstract class' protected method

Question

I am using Spring 3.2 and AspectJ 1.7.1. (It is not likely that I can upgrade to later versions in the near future.)

I need to define a pointcut for a protected method in an abstract class. AFAIK I need AspectJ for methods that are not public, so I have only tried this with the (AspectJ) annotations:

package com.aspects;
@Aspect
public class Aspect{

    @Before("execution(* com.x.y.x.MyClass.myMethod(..))")
    public void beforeAspect(){
       //do something here
    }

}

In my beans.xml I have:

<aop:aspectj-autoproxy />
<bean id="myAspect" class="com.aspects.Aspect"/>

I have checked and my Aspect class is created (constructor is getting called), no exception is being thrown when the application is launched. However I can not get the beforeAspect to be called. For public methods in non abstract classes this works. How can I make it work for protected method in abstract class?

Answer 1

You should add a + sign after the abstract class.

So

"execution(* com.x.y.x.MyClass.myMethod(..))" 

should look like:

"execution(* com.x.y.x.MyClass+.myMethod(..))"
                              ↑

The + is about inheritance either extending the given class (MyClass) or implementing an interface.