Annotation Jdk1.

Pawan Modi
Senior R&D Engineer

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Agenda

• Introduction
• First Example
• Defining Annotations
• Annotations Types & Usage
• Example
• Summary

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Introduction
 Annotations are generally a way to add meta-data
information to an element.
 An annotation type definition takes an "at" (@)
sign, followed by the interface keyword plus the
annotation name.

 An element can be a class, method, field,

constructor, variables etc.
 This meta-data are processed by the tools i.e.
compilers, javadoc, etc.

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First Example

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Defining Annotation
 Some rules to define an annotation type
 Annotation declaration should start with an 'at' sign like
@, following with an interface keyword, following with
the annotation name.
 Method declarations should not have any parameters.
 Method declarations should not have any throws
clauses.
 Return types of the method should be one of the
following:
 primitives
 String
 Class
 enum
 array of the above types

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Annotation Types
 There are two types of annotations available in JDK5
◦ Simple annotations:
 Just to annotate your code.
 Developer cannot use them to create a custom annotation type.
 There are only three types of simple annotations provided by JDK5
 Override
 Deprecated
 Suppresswarnings

◦ Meta annotations:
 These are the annotation types designed for annotating annotation-
type declarations.
 Simply speaking, these are called the annotations-of-annotations.

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Simple Annotations
Override
◦ This annotation tells compiler that method
must be an overridden method.

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Simple Annotations Conti…
 Deprecated
◦ This annotation informs client not to use this
method / class anymore because in the future
versions this old method / class may not be
supported.
◦ Clients may prepare themselves not to
depend on the old method anymore.

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Simple Annotations Conti…

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Simple Annotations Conti…
 SuppressWarnings
◦ From Java 5.0, references to any of the
Collection types should be parameterized.
Else the compiler will issue a warning
message. The solution for this problem is to
make use of @SuppressWarnings annotation.

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Simple Annotations Conti…

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Annotation Types Conti…
 Meta annotations:
◦ These are the annotation types designed for
annotating annotation-type declarations.
Simply speaking, these are called the
annotations-of-annotations.
◦ There are four types of meta-annotations.
 Target
 Retention
 Documented
 Inherited
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Meta Annotations
 Target
 tells for which element type this annotation is applicable
 It contains the following enumerated types as its value:
 @Target(ElementType.TYPE)—can be applied to any element of a
class
 @Target(ElementType.FIELD)—can be applied to a field or property
 @Target(ElementType.METHOD)—can be applied to a method level
annotation
 @Target(ElementType.PARAMETER)—can be applied to the
parameters of a method
 @Target(ElementType.CONSTRUCTOR)—can be applied to
constructors
 @Target(ElementType.LOCAL_VARIABLE)—can be applied to local
variables
 @Target(ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE)—indicates that the
declared type itself is an annotation type
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Meta Annotations Conti . . .

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Meta Annotations Conti…
Retention
 Tells what extent the Annotations should be
retained.
 The three possible ways of telling this are,
 RetentionPolicy.SOURCE—Annotations with this type will
be by retained only at the source level and will be ignored
by the compiler
 RetentionPolicy.CLASS—Annotations with this type will be
by retained by the compiler at compile time, but will be
ignored by the VM
 RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME—Annotations with this type will
be retained by the VM so they can be read only at run-time

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Meta Annotations Conti…

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Meta Annotations Conti…
Document
◦ indicates that an annotation with this type
should be documented by the javadoc tool
◦ By default, annotations are not included in
javadoc
◦ But if @Documented is used, it then will be
processed by javadoc-like tools and the
annotation type information will also be
included in the generated document.

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Meta Annotations Conti…

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Meta Annotations Conti…
Inherited
◦ It indicates that the annotated class with this
type is automatically inherited.
◦ if you define an annotation with the
@Inherited tag, then annotate a class with
your annotation, and finally extend the class in
a subclass.
◦ All properties of the parent class will be
inherited into its subclass

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Meta Annotations Conti…

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Example

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Example

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Example Conti…

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Summary
 Annotation is a special form of syntactic metadata
that can be added to Java source code.

 They provide information about various elements of a

Java class.

 Classes, methods, variables, parameters and packages

may be annotated.

 There are seven annotations provided in the J2SE 5.0

release.
 @Deprecated, @Override, @SuppressWarnings,
@Documented, @Inherited, @Retention and @Target.

 These are not data about data but data about classes,
methods, instance and static variables etc
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References
Online Tutorial

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_annotation
 http://www.javabeat.net/articles/30-annotations-
in-java-50-1.html
 http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/
10936_3556176_1
 http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/
annotations.html

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 Question ??

Kindly send all you queries to the following id.

modipawan8126@gmail.com

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Thank you!

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