Spring AOP - Annotation Based PointCut

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JoinPoint

A JoinPoint represents a point in your application where you can plug-in AOP aspect. You can also say, it is the actual place in the application where an action will be taken using Spring AOP framework. Consider the following examples −

• All methods classes contained in a package(s).

• A particular methods of a class.

Pointcut

Pointcut is a set of one or more JoinPoint where an advice should be executed. You can specify Pointcuts using expressions or patterns as we will see in our AOP examples. In Spring, Pointcut helps to use specific JoinPoints to apply the advice. Consider the following examples −

• @Pointcut("execution(* com.tutorialspoint.*.*(..))")

• @Pointcut("execution(* com.tutorialspoint.Student.getName(..))")

Syntax

@Aspect
public class Logging {
   @Pointcut("execution(* com.tutorialspoint.*.*(..))")
   private void selectAll(){}
}

Where,

• @Aspect − Mark a class as a class containing advice methods.

• @Pointcut − Mark a function as a Pointcut

• execution( expression ) − Expression covering methods on which advice is to be applied.

To understand the above-mentioned concepts related to JoinPoint and PointCut, let us write an example which will implement few of the PointCuts. To write our example with few advices, let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and use the following steps to create a Spring application −

Following is the content of Logging.java file. This is actually a sample of aspect module, which defines the methods to be called at various points.

package com.tutorialspoint;

import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Pointcut;
import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Before;

@Aspect
public class Logging {
   /** Following is the definition for a PointCut to select
      *  all the methods available. So advice will be called
      *  for all the methods.
   */
   @Pointcut("execution(* com.tutorialspoint.*.*(..))")
   private void selectAll(){}

   /** 
      * This is the method which I would like to execute
      * before a selected method execution.
   */
   @Before("selectAll()")
   public void beforeAdvice(){
      System.out.println("Going to setup student profile.");
   }  
}

Following is the content of the Student.java file.

package com.tutorialspoint;

public class Student {
   private Integer age;
   private String name;

   public void setAge(Integer age) {
      this.age = age;
   }
   public Integer getAge() {
      System.out.println("Age : " + age );
      return age;
   }
   public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }
   public String getName() {
      System.out.println("Name : " + name );
      return name;
   }
   public void printThrowException(){
      System.out.println("Exception raised");
      throw new IllegalArgumentException();
   }
}

Following is the content of the MainApp.java file.

package com.tutorialspoint;

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class MainApp {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("Beans.xml");

      Student student = (Student) context.getBean("student");
      student.getName();
      student.getAge();     
   }
}

Following is the configuration file Beans.xml.

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
   xmlns:aop = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd 
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop 
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd ">

   <aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>

   <!-- Definition for student bean -->
   <bean id = "student" class = "com.tutorialspoint.Student">
      <property name = "name"  value = "Zara" />
      <property name = "age"  value = "11"/>      
   </bean>

   <!-- Definition for logging aspect -->
   <bean id = "logging" class = "com.tutorialspoint.Logging"/> 
      
</beans>

Run Project

Once you are done creating the source and configuration files, run your application. Rightclick on MainApp.java in your application and use run as Java Application command. If everything is fine with your application, it will print the following message.

Going to setup student profile.
Name : Zara
Going to setup student profile.
Age : 11

The above-defined @Pointcut uses an expression to select all the methods defined under the package com.tutorialspoint. @Before advice uses the above-defined Pointcut as a parameter. Effectively beforeAdvice() method will be called before every method covered by above Pointcut.