How to write a pointcut to get an operation on a class method? - spring

Question

I have a class named PersonDAOImpl, where I use Hibernate to persist data on my data base.
In order to audit the class, I created another class using the #Aspect annotation, where I declared some Pointcuts and Advices. Everytime I insert, update or delete a person, I'm able to store on a table proper information about the operation executed.
However now I have more DAO classes, and I don't want to create more Aspects classes or more Advices for every method on every DAO. Instead, I want to "capture" the operations of persist(), update() or delete() in a single pointcut.
For example I have this method on my DAO:
#Override
#Transactional
public void addPerson(Person p) {
Session session = this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
session.persist(p);
session.flush();
logger.info("Person saved successfully, Person Details="+p);
}
And this is how I audit the insertions:
#Pointcut("execution(* com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao.PersonDAOImpl.addPerson(..))")
public void addNewPerson() {
}
#After("addNewPerson()")
public void aP() {
System.out.println("added a new person");
operation = "Insert";
date = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
register(operation, date);
}
But I want something like #Pointcut("execution(*com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao.anydaoclass.anymethod.persist(..))")
I mean a pointcut for any method on any of my DAO classes where persist() is called. Same thing for update() and delete().
How can I achieve this? I've tried with 'within' and 'withincode' but nothing happens. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Instead of execution expression you might want to use the within expression something like this.
within(com.yourpackage..*)
For this you will have to make sure that all your DAO's are within this package. The above expression will match all the methods defined in classes inside package com.yourpackage and classes sub-packages.
Here is a short doc if you would like to configure it some other way,
Pointcut Expressions in Spring

Answer 2

I would use the 'AroundAdvice'.
Quote for documentation:
Around advice runs "around" a matched method execution. It has the opportunity to do work both before and after the method executes, and to determine when, how, and even if, the method actually gets to execute at all.
Around Advice Spring documentation
So, in your example, you would have a method:
#Around("com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao.*.persist(..)")
public Object doSomething(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
}
This way every time someone on 'com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao' calls persist method, Spring Aspect will invoke doSomething method. Around advice works both before and after the method executes, so you should take care to don't do the same thing twice.
I would create a specific method for every operation (one for insert, another for update and delete) but you could use the same method using short-circuit operators. That way, your #Around annotation would be like:
#Around("com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao.*.persist(..) || com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao.*.update(..) || com.dacasals.raspertwo.dao.*.delete(..)")
public Object doSomething(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
}