Dynamic AOP configuration in Spring - spring

I'm new to Spring AOP, and I've to know if it's possible to implement my project with Spring AOP. Specifically, I want to know if in Spring AOP it's possible to configure, at runtime, which aspects will be executed and in which order. NB: I want to control only mine application aspects', without interfering with Spring-managed aspects like transactions or security.

You can control the ordering of aspesct (using declare precedence), but its hard to do this at run time, as it would need to reapply the weaving for already weaved classes.
The same goes for specifying which aspects to execute.
You could have an if(!enabled){return;} check at the start of each aspect method, and the enabled flag could be set on or off just like any normal bean. This way, the aspects are always weaved in, but they will do nothing if they are disabled.
UPDATE
Here is example of how to use an aspect as a bean.
Lets say you have an aspect like this:
#Component // IMPORTANT
public aspect MyAspect {
Object responder;
public void setResponder(Object object) {
this.responder=object;
}
}
Then in your spring service class, you can wiring the aspect like this:
#Service
public class MyServiceImpl implements MyService {
#Autowired
MyAspect aspect;
void action() {
aspect.setResponder(null);
}
}
This works because aspects are actually java classes. The component annotation causes the aspect to be recognised as a bean by the spring component scan.
I have compiled this code successfully, but not actually tested it runtime, so would be good to know if it works.

Related

Is it ok to use non-annotated classes (beans) in spring framework?

I have a spring-boot project. Some of the classes I am using it in the 'spring' way, meaning that they are annotated by "#Service", "#Repository", "#Autowired". At the same time, I have lots of classes, which are only used in the normal Java way, meaning that there are no any Spring annotations, and they are created in the standard way of constructing an object in a constructor.
For example, one of the non-annotated classes is:
public class GenericTree<T>
{
private GenericTreeNode<T> root;
public GenericTree ()
{
root = null;
}
public GenericTreeNode<T> getRoot ()
{
return this.root;
}
public void setRoot (GenericTreeNode<T> root)
{
this.root = root;
}
...
}
Is it OK or normal to have a mixure of classes with or without Spring annotations? Probably, I could convert all non-annotated classes into annotated classes by using Spring's annotation markers. Does that really benefit or is it necessary?
BTW, my application's main logic and functions are not web-centric, although they are created as a Spring project. The reason I created in Spring is I want to provide a restful service for my interface so that I can easily test in browser in development, and others can use it with Restful service.
Yes it is ok.
Keep in mind that annotations are not Spring exclusive. Annotations were introduced in Java 5 and they are just meta data for your Java code. This meta data can be useful at:
Compile time
Build time
Runtime
You can even create your own custom annotations and annotate your code with them.
Spring framework comes with some annotations and each one of them has its purpose, but that doesn't mean you have to annotate all your classes with Spring annotations when you are using this framework.
When you annotate your classes as Spring Beans, they become part of the Spring Application Context, thus making them available to be injected with the #Autowired annotation (Spring framework is based on the dependency injection design pattern). But Spring annotations have other implications too, I cannot go into the detail of each one of them but for example, you have to consider that the default scope of annotations like #Bean, #Component, #Controller, #Repository, #Service is Singleton. So whenever you annotate a class with one of these annotations and you don't define a scope, what you get is a singleton class shared all over your application. Other scopes are:
singleton
prototype
request
session
application
websocket
Taking in consideration your GenericTree class, does it make sense to annotate an abstract data structure class as a Spring Bean? Probably not.
So yes, when you develop an application based on Spring framework the normal thing is to have a mixture of Spring annotated classes and regular POJO's.
I recommend you to read the Spring framework documentation, learn what dependency injection is and the purpose and implications of the most used Spring annotations.

Spring MVC #Configuration class constructor

As part of the Spring MVC initialization, I need to run an action (just calling a method on a 3rd party library) once as a setup operation. I'm working in Spring MVC environment where I don't really have control over the web.xml or anything, so I can't add a servlet context listener or anything. I tried making an implementation of a WebApplicationInitializer but it never seems to get called (no idea why though, or how to try and debug that any further).
If I annotate a class with #Configuration it does get created, so I'm wondering if I can use the class's constructor to perform that setup operation (calling a 3rd party setup method). Is this appropriate/safe to do? Are there any other alternatives for this kind of thing? I'm new to Spring, so I might just be missing something that's meant for this kind of thing.
Thanks
Configuration class would be an appropriate place to contain some initialization logic. You can place it in a constructor, method annotated with #PostConstruct or afterPropertiesSet() method if you implement the InitializingBean interface for example. The difference is that the constructor code will be called before the beans in your configuration class are instantiated, so if your initialization code depends on some Spring beans, go with the #PostConstruct / InitializingBean approach.
Example:
#Configuration
public class Config {
#PostConstruct
public void initialize() {
// Run some action
}
}

Logging with spring-aop

I am trying to add some kind of tracing to my app. It would work like that: I set package name in my config and all calls to public methods of classes in this package are logged.
I can't use weaving here (due to some technical reasons), so I tried to use spring-proxy.
My pointcut
execution(public * com.my.package.*.*(..))
and it works fine. But what Spring uses Proxy or CGLIB to proxy class, so each class should at least
Have parameterless constructor
All methods should be implementations of some interface
Other classes could not be proxied. That is ok for me to do not log them. But spring creates proxies and ruins my app.
How can I tell spring: "do not proxy this class if it has no parameterless constructor and some of its methods are not implementations of interface"?
Not sure about the answer to your question, however, another way to do the tracing, is to use an annotation:
public #interface Monitor {
}
aspect:
public aspect MonitoringAspect {
pointcut methodToMonitor() : execution(#Monitor * *(..));
}
Usage:
#Monitor
public void methodToBeMonitored() {
}
This way you only affect the methods you want to.
I suppose for a big project, this might not work as you want to monitor many methods.

aspectj and spring with aspectj-autoproxy

I've declared my aspects using the #Aspect annotation, but the advice does not seem to get applied. The aspect works in a few other projects that I have, and the key difference seems to be that the other projects are completely wired using annotations, and this particular project is xml wired. The only bean that is annotation wired is the Aspect. So I'm wondering if spring's aspectj support, when using aspectj-autoproxy is sensitive to order that the beans are defined in the xml.
For example, will beans declared after aspectj-autoproxy in xml be considered for AOP pointcuts?
EDIT:
I moved the <aop:aspectj-autoproxy /> until after all beans are created and still no luck.
Basically my code consists of:
#Component
#Aspect
public class SomeAspect {
#Pointcut("#annotation(MyAnnotation)")
public void isX() {}
#After("isX()")
public void XX() {
System.out.println("Called aspect");
}
}
And my controller has something like:
public class XController extends AbstractCommandController {
#MyAnnotation
public void handleX(...) {
// do stuff
}
#Override
protected void handle(...) {
return handleX(...);
}
}
And then the spring xml is:
<context:component-scan base-package="package.of.some.aspect" />
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy />
<!-- the rest of the beans below -->
<bean id="someController" class="..." />
My previous projects captured and loaded all beans via the component-scan. That's what's different this time.
EDIT2:
The other difference is that the other projects are using #Controller, and #RequestMethod. And in this case I'm using a derived class of AbstractCommmandController. I'm wondering if this applies:
http://forum.springsource.org/archive/index.php/t-46637.html
Namely that I can't apply advice to any method except handleRequest().
EDIT3:
My latest try is to override handleRequest() and apply my annotation there. Under the assumption that when spring proxies my controller it will see the annotation and apply the advice, since it's calling through the public, externally called method. This still doesn't work.
I see that you are calling the method handleX directly from another method in the same class. This will not respect the annotiation, as the work of processing AOP annotations is done by a JDK proxy that wraps your class and exposes the same interfaces.
It's possible that you can work around this by using CGLIB instead of JDK proxies, but in my experience, the most reliable solution is just not to rely on any AOP annotations for methods called internally.

How to use spring to resolve dependencies of an object created manually?

I would like to know if it's possible to use Spring to resolve the dependencies of an object created manually in my program. Take a look at the following class:
public class TestClass {
private MyDependency md;
public TestClass() {
}
...
public void methodThaUsesMyDependency() {
...
md.someMethod();
...
}
}
This TestClass is not a spring bean, but needs MyDependency, that is a spring bean. Is there some way I can inject this dependency through Spring, even if I instantiate TestClass with a new operator inside my code?
Thanks
Edit: The method I'm describing in my original answer below is the general way to accomplish DI external of the container. For your specific need - testing - I agree with DJ's answer. It's much more appropriate to use Spring's test support, for example:
#Test
#ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath*:**/applicationContext.xml" })
public class MyTest extends AbstractTestNGSpringContextTests {
#Resource
private MyDependency md;
#Test
public void myTest() {
...
While the above example is a TestNG test, there is also Junit support explained in 8.3.7.2. Context management and caching.
General approach: Annotate your class with #Configurable and utilize AspectJ load-time or compile-time weaving. See 6.8.1 in the Spring documentation on AOP for more details.
You can then annotate your instance variables with #Resource or #Autowired. Though they accomplish the same goal of dependency injection, I recommend using #Resource since it's a Java standard rather than Spring-specific.
Lastly, remember to consider using the transient keyword (or #Transient for JPA) if you plan on serializing or persisting the objects in the future. Chances are you don't want to serialize references to your DI'd repository, service, or component beans.
See the autowire() method on the AutowireCapableBeanFactory class. If you use an ClasspathXmlApplicationContext, you can get the factory with getAutowireCapableBeanFactory()
To get the ApplicationContext, you would need to use a static singleton or other central repository, such as JNDI or a Servlet container. See DefaultLocatorFactory on how to get an instance of the ApplicationContext.
If what you need is for testing purposes, Spring has good support for the scenario that you described above.
Check out Spring Reference manual section on Testing

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