The AspectJ weaver takes class files as input and produces class files as output. The weaving process itself can take place at one of three different times: compile-time, post-compile time, and load-time. The class files produced by the weaving process (and hence the run-time behaviour of an application) are the same regardless of the approach chosen. Compile-time weaving is the simplest approach. When you have the source code for an application, ajc will compile from source and produce woven class files as output. The invocation of the weaver is integral to the ajc compilation process. The aspects themselves may be in source or binary form. Post-compile weaving (also sometimes called binary weaving) is used to weave existing class files and JAR files. As with compile-time weaving, the aspects used for weaving may be in source or binary form, and may themselves be woven by aspects. Load-time weaving (LTW) is simply binary weaving defered until the point that a class loader loads a class file and defines the class to the JVM. To support this, one or more "weaving class loaders", either provided explicitly by the run-time environment or enabled through a "weaving agent" are required. You may also hear the term "run-time weaving". We define this as the weaving of classes that have already been defined to the JVM (without reloading those classes). AspectJ 5 does not provide explicit support for run-time weaving although simple coding patterns can support dynamically enabling and disabling advice in aspects. By default a class file that has been woven by the AspectJ compiler cannot subsequently be rewoven (passed as input to the weaver). If you are developing AspectJ applications that are to be used in a load-time weaving environment, you need to specify the -Xreweavable compiler option when building them. This causes AspectJ to save additional state in the class files that is used to support subsequent reweaving. As per AspectJ 1.5.0 M3 aspects (code style or annotation style) are reweavable by default, and weaved classes are reweavable by default as well as per AspectJ 1.5.0 M4. All load-time weaving is done in the context of a class loader, and hence the set of aspects used for weaving and the types that can be woven are affected by the class loader delegation model. This ensures that LTW complies with the Java 2 security model. The following rules govern the interaction of load-time weaving with class loading: All aspects to be used for weaving must be defined to the weaver before any types to be woven are loaded. This avoids types being "missed" by aspects added later, with the result that invariants across types fail. All aspects visible to the weaver are usable. A visible aspect is one defined by the weaving class loader or one of its parent class loaders. All concrete visible aspects are woven and all abstract visible aspects may be extended. A class loader may only weave classes that it defines. It may not weave classes loaded by a delegate or parent class loader. New in AspectJ 5 are a number of mechanisms to make load-time weaving easy to use. The load-time weaving mechanism is chosen through JVM startup options. Configuration files determine the set of aspects to be used for weaving and which types will be woven. Additional diagnostic options allow the user to debug the configuration and weaving process. AspectJ 5 supports several ways of enabling load-time weaving for an application: agents, a command-line launch script, and a set of interfaces for integration of AspectJ load-time weaving in custom environments. Agents AspectJ 5 ships with a number of load-time weaving agents that enable load-time weaving. These agents and their configuration are execution environment dependent. Configuration for the supported environments is discussed later in this chapter. Using Java 5 JVMTI you can specify the -javaagent:pathto/aspectjweaver.jar option to the JVM. Using BEA JRockit and Java 1.3/1.4, the very same behavior can be obtained using BEA JRockit JMAPI features with the -Xmanagement:class=org.aspectj.weaver.loadtime.JRockitAgent Command-line wrapper script aj The aj command runs Java programs in Java 1.4 or later by setting up WeavingURLClassLoader as the system class loader. For more information, see . Custom class loader A public interface is provided to allow a user written class loader to instantiate a weaver and weave classes after loading and before defining them in the JVM. This enables load-time weaving to be supported in environments where no weaving agent is available. It also allows the user to explicitly restrict by class loader which classes can be woven. For more information, see and the API documentation and source for WeavingURLClassLoader and WeavingAdapter. The weaver is configured using one or more META-INF/aop.xml files located on the class loader search path. Each file may define a list of concrete aspects to be used for weaving, type patterns describing which types should woven, and a set of options to be passed to the weaver. In addition AspectJ 5 supports the definition of concrete aspects in XML. Aspects defined in this way must extend an abstract aspect visible to the weaver. The abstract aspect may define abstract pointcuts (but not abstract methods). The following example shows a simple aop.xml file: ]]> An aop.xml file contains two key sections: "aspects" defines one or more aspects to the weaver and controls which aspects are to be used in the weaving process; "weaver" defines weaver options and which types should be woven. The simplest way to define an aspect to the weaver is to specify the fully-qualified name of the aspect type in an aspect element. You can also declare (and define to the weaver) aspects inline in the aop.xml file. This is done using the "concrete-aspect" element. A concrete-aspect declaration must provide a pointcut definition for every abstract pointcut in the abstract aspect it extends. This mechanism is a useful way of externalizing configuration for infrastructure and auxiliary aspects where the pointcut definitions themselves can be considered part of the configuration of the service. Refer to the next section for more details. The aspects element may optionally contain one or more include and exclude elements (by default, all defined aspects are used for weaving). Specifying include or exclude elements restricts the set of defined aspects to be used for weaving to those that are matched by an include pattern, but not by an exclude pattern. The within attribute accepts a type pattern of the same form as a within pcd, except that && and || are replaced by 'AND' and 'OR'. Note that include and exclude affects the declared list of aspects (or concrete-aspect) defined in this sole aop.xml and has no side effect on other aop.xml files. Also note it is required to use aspect or concrete-aspect elements and that include does not mean "pick any aspect you 'll find" - as the aspect list must be known by the weaver. The weaver element is used to pass options to the weaver and to specify the set of types that should be woven. If no include elements are specified then all types seen by the weaver will be woven. When several configuration files are visible from a given weaving class loader their contents are conceptually merged (this applies to both aop.xml files and to aop.properties files as described in the next section). The files are merged in the order they are found on the search path (regular getResourceAsStream lookup) according to the following rules: The set of available aspects is the set of all declared and defined aspects (aspect and concrete-aspect elements of the aspects section). The set of aspects used for weaving is the subset of the available aspects that are matched by at least one include statement and are not matched by any exclude statements. If there are no include statements then all non-excluded aspects are included. The set of types to be woven are those types matched by at least one weaver include element and not matched by any weaver exclude element. If there are no weaver include statements then all non-excluded types are included. The weaver options are derived by taking the union of the options specified in each of the weaver options attribute specifications. Where an option takes a value e.g. -warn:none the most recently defined value will be used. It is not an error for the same aspect to be defined to the weaver in more than one visible META-INF/aop.xml file. However, if a declarative concrete aspect is declared in more than aop.xml file then an error will be issued. A concrete aspect defined in this way will be used to weave types loaded by the class loader that loaded the aop.xml file in which it was defined. A META-INF/aop.xml file will automatically be generated when using the -outjar option of the AspectJ compiler. It will simply contain a (possibly empty) set of aspect elements, one for each concrete aspect included in the JAR. It is possible to concretize an abstract aspect by the mean of the META-INF/aop.xml file. This is usefull to define abstract pointcuts at deployment time, and also gives control over precedence through the precedence attribute of the concrete-aspect XML element. Consider the following: This aspect is equivalent to the following in code style: This aspect (in either of its style) is a good candidate for concretization through META-INF/aop.xml. It defines the abstract pointcut within(). It is important to remember that concretization in this case must obey to the following rules: The parent aspect must be abstract. It can be an @AspectJ or a regular code style aspect. Only simple abstract pointcut can be concretized ie pointcut that don't expose state (through args(), this(), target(), if()). In @AspectJ syntax as illustrated in this sample, this means the method that hosts the pointcut is abstract, has no arguments, and returns void. Concretization must defines all such abstract pointcuts ie it is not possible to have concrete-aspect inter dependancies. Concretization can only concretize pointcuts ie there cannot be abstract method left in the aspect. If you have requirements for more complex aspect inheritance, you should consider regular aspect inheritance instead of concretization through XML. Given that the following XML is valid: ]]> It is important to remember that the name attribute in the XML directive concrete-aspect defines the fully qualified name that will be given to the concrete aspect. It must then be a valid class name. This one will indeed be generated on the fly by the weaver internals. You must then ensure that there won't be name collision. Also note that the concrete aspect will be defined at the classloader level for which the aop.xml is visible. This implies that if you need to use the aspectof methods to access the aspect instance(s) (depending on the perclause of the aspect it extends) you have to use the helper API org.aspectj.lang.Aspects.aspectOf(..) as in: As described in the previous section, the concrete-aspect element in META-INF/aop.xml gives the option to declare the precedence, just as @DeclarePrecedence or declare precedence do in aspect source code. Sometimes it is required to declare precedence without extending any abstract aspect as well. For such a need, it is possible to use the concrete-aspect element without the extends attribute and without any pointcut nested element, but only with a precedence attribute. Consider the following: ]]> This deployment time declaration is only defining a precedence rule. You have to remember that the name attribute must be a valid fully qualified class name that will be then reserved for this concrete-aspect and must not conflict with other classes you deploy. The table below lists the AspectJ options supported by LTW. All other options will be ignored and a warning issued. Option Purpose -verbose Issue informational messages about the weaving process. If ever you need to have information when the load time weaving engine is bootstrapped (hence its logger as per -XmessageHandlerClass:... not ready yet), you can use the option -Daj.weaving.verbose=true on the JVM startup command line. Messages will then be printed on stderr as long as the message handler class is not ready. -1.5 Run the weaver in 1.5 mode (supports autoboxing in join point matching) -Xlintfile:pathToAResource Configure lint messages as specified in the given resource (visible from this aop.xml file' classloader) -Xlint:default, -Xlint:ignore, ... Configure lint messages, refer to documentation for meaningfull values -nowarn, -warn:none Suppress warning messages -proceedOnError Continue weaving even if errors occur (for example, "... already woven" errors) -Xreweavable Produce class files that can subsequently be rewoven -XnoInline Don't inline around advice. -showWeaveInfo Issue informational messages whenever the weaver touches a class file -XmessageHandlerClass:... Provide alternative output destination to stdout/stderr for all weaver messages. The given value must be the full qualified class name of a class that implements org.aspectj.bridge.IMessageHandler and that is visible from where the aop.xml is packed. If more than one such options are used, the first occurence only is taken into account. You must also be very cautious about using a custom handler since it is likely that it will be invoked (as well as all its third parties) while the weaving is done, which means that f.e. it cannot be weaved by the aspects that are configured within the same deployment unit. Those classes are not exposed to the LTW infrastructure, no matter the configuration of the aop.xml file(s): All org.aspectj.* classes (and subpackages) - as those are needed by the infrastructure itself All java.* and javax.* classes (and subpackages) All sun.reflect.* classes - as those are JDK specific classes used when reflective calls occurs Despite these restrictions, it is perfectly possible to match call join points for calls to these types providing the calling class is exposed to the weaver. Subtypes of these excluded types that are exposed to the weaver may of course be woven. Note that dynamic proxy representations are exposed to the LTW infrastructure and are not considered a special case. Some lint options behave differently when used under load-time weaving. The adviceDidNotMatch won't be handled as a warn (as during compile time) but as an info message. To use LTW the aspectjweaver.jar library must be added to the classpath. This contains the AspectJ 5 runtime, weaver, weaving class loader and weaving agents. It also contains the DTD for parsing XML weaving configuration files. When using Java 5 the JVMTI agent can be used by starting the JVM with the following option (adapt according to the path to aspectjweaver.jar): The JRockit agent is configured with the following JVM option: