Examples
About this Chapter
This chapter consists entirely of examples of AspectJ use.
The examples can be grouped into four categories:
technique
Examples which illustrate how to use one or more features of the
language.
development
Examples of using AspectJ during the development phase of a
project.
production
Examples of using AspectJ to provide functionality in an
application.
reusable
Examples of reuse of aspects and pointcuts.
Obtaining, Compiling and Running the Examples
The examples source code is part of AspectJ's documentation
distribution which may be downloaded from the AspectJ download page.
Compiling most examples should be straightforward. Go the
InstallDir/examples
directory, and look for a .lst file in one of the
example subdirectories. Use the -arglist option to
ajc to compile the example. For instance, to compile
the telecom example with billing, type
ajc -argfile telecom/billing.lst
To run the examples, your classpath must include the AspectJ run-time
Java archive (aspectjrt.jar). You may either set
the CLASSPATH environment variable or use the
-classpath command line option to the Java
interpreter:
(In Unix use a : in the CLASSPATH)
java -classpath ".:InstallDir/lib/aspectjrt.jar" telecom.billingSimulation
(In Windows use a ; in the CLASSPATH)
java -classpath ".;InstallDir/lib/aspectjrt.jar" telecom.billingSimulation
Basic Techniques
This section presents two basic techniques of using AspectJ, one each
from the two fundamental ways of capturing crosscutting concerns: with
dynamic join points and advice, and with static introduction. Advice
changes an application's behavior. Introduction changes both an
application's behavior and its structure.
The first example, , is about gathering and using
information about the join point that has triggered some advice. The
second example, , concerns changing an existing class
hierarchy.
Join Points and thisJoinPoint
Join Points and
thisJoinPoint
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/tjp.)
A join point is some point in the
execution of a program together with a view into the execution context
when that point occurs. Join points are picked out by pointcuts. When a
join point is reached, before, after or around advice on that join
point may be run.
When dealing with pointcuts that pick out join points of specific
method calls, field gets, or the like, the advice will know exactly what
kind of join point it is executing under. It might even have access to
context given by its pointcut. Here, for example, since the only join
points reached will be calls of a certain method, we can get the target
and one of the args of the method directly.
But sometimes the join point is not so clear. For
instance, suppose a complex application is being debugged, and one
would like to know when any method in some class is being executed.
Then, the pointcut
will select all join points where a method defined within the class
ProblemClass is being executed. But advice
executes when a particular join point is matched, and so the question,
"Which join point was matched?" naturally arises.
Information about the join point that was matched is available to
advice through the special variable thisJoinPoint,
of type org.aspectj.lang.JoinPoint. This
class provides methods that return
the kind of join point that was matched
the source location of the current join point
normal, short and long string representations of the
current join point
the actual argument(s) to the method or field selected
by the current join point
the signature of the method or field selected by the
current join point
the target object
the currently executing object
a reference to the static portion of the object
representing the current join point. This is also available through
the special variable thisJoinPointStaticPart.
The Demo class
The class tjp.Demo in
tjp/Demo.java defines two methods
foo and bar with different
parameter lists and return types. Both are called, with suitable
arguments, by Demo's go
method which was invoked from within its main
method.
The Aspect GetInfo
This aspect uses around advice to intercept the execution of
methods foo and bar in
Demo, and prints out information garnered from
thisJoinPoint to the console.
Defining the scope of a pointcut
The pointcut goCut is defined as
so that only executions made in the control
flow of Demo.go are intercepted. The control
flow from the method go includes the execution of
go itself, so the definition of the around
advice includes !execution(* go()) to exclude it
from the set of executions advised.
Printing the class and method name
The name of the method and that method's defining class are
available as parts of the Signature,
found using the method getSignature of either
thisJoinPoint or
thisJoinPointStaticPart.
Printing the parameters
The static portions of the parameter details, the name and
types of the parameters, can be accessed through the CodeSignature
associated with the join point. All execution join points have code
signatures, so the cast to CodeSignature
cannot fail.
The dynamic portions of the parameter details, the actual
values of the parameters, are accessed directly from the execution
join point object.
Roles and Views Using Introduction
Roles and Views Using
Introduction
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/introduction.)
Like advice, pieces of introduction are members of an aspect. They
define new members that act as if they were defined on another
class. Unlike advice, introduction affects not only the behavior of the
application, but also the structural relationship between an
application's classes.
This is crucial: Affecting the class structure of an application at
makes these modifications available to other components of the
application.
Introduction modifies a class by adding or changing
member fields
member methods
nested classes
and by making the class
implement interfaces
extend classes
This example provides three illustrations of the use of introduction to
encapsulate roles or views of a class. The class we will be introducing
into, Point, is a simple class with rectangular
and polar coordinates. Our introduction will make the class
Point, in turn, cloneable, hashable, and
comparable. These facilities are provided by introduction forms without
having to modify the class Point.
The class Point
The class Point defines geometric points
whose interface includes polar and rectangular coordinates, plus some
simple operations to relocate points. Point's
implementation has attributes for both its polar and rectangular
coordinates, plus flags to indicate which currently reflect the
position of the point. Some operations cause the polar coordinates to
be updated from the rectangular, and some have the opposite effect.
This implementation, which is in intended to give the minimum number
of conversions between coordinate systems, has the property that not
all the attributes stored in a Point object
are necessary to give a canonical representation such as might be
used for storing, comparing, cloning or making hash codes from
points. Thus the aspects, though simple, are not totally trivial.
The diagram below gives an overview of the aspects and their
interaction with the class Point.
Making Points Cloneable — The Aspect
CloneablePoint
This first example demonstrates the introduction of a interface
(Cloneable) and a method
(clone) into the class
Point. In Java, all objects inherit the method
clone from the class
Object, but an object is not cloneable unless
its class also implements the interface
Cloneable. In addition, classes frequently
have requirements over and above the simple bit-for-bit copying that
Object.clone does. In our case, we want to update
a Point's coordinate systems before we
actually clone the Point. So we have to
override Object.clone with a new method that does
what we want.
The CloneablePoint aspect uses the
declare parents form to introduce the interface
Cloneable into the class
Point. It then defines a method,
Point.clone, which overrides the method
clone that was inherited from
Object. Point.clone
updates the Point's coordinate systems before
invoking its superclass' clone method.
Note that since aspects define types just as classes define
types, we can define a main method that is
invocable from the command line to use as a test method.
Making Points Comparable — The
Aspect ComparablePoint
This second example introduces another interface and
method into the class Point.
The interface Comparable defines the
single method compareTo which can be use to define
a natural ordering relation among the objects of a class that
implement it.
The aspect ComparablePoint introduces
implements Comparable into
Point along with a
compareTo method that can be used to compare
Points. A Point
p1 is said to be less than
another Point p2 if
p1 is closer to the origin.
Making Points Hashable — The Aspect
HashablePoint
The third aspect overrides two previously defined methods to
give to Point the hashing behavior we
want.
The method Object.hashCode returns an unique
integer, suitable for use as a hash table key. Different
implementations are allowed return different integers, but must
return distinct integers for distinct objects, and the same integer
for objects that test equal. But since the default implementation
of Object.equal returns true
only when two objects are identical, we need to redefine both
equals and hashCode to work
correctly with objects of type Point. For
example, we want two Point objects to test
equal when they have the same x and
y values, or the same rho and
theta values, not just when they refer to the same
object. We do this by overriding the methods
equals and hashCode in the
class Point.
The class HashablePoint introduces the
methods hashCode and equals
into the class Point. These methods use
Point's rectangular coordinates to generate a
hash code and to test for equality. The x and
y coordinates are obtained using the appropriate
get methods, which ensure the rectangular coordinates are up-to-date
before returning their values.
Again, we supply a main method in the aspect
for testing.
Development Aspects
Tracing Aspects
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/tracing.)
Overview
Writing a class that provides tracing functionality is easy: a couple
of functions, a boolean flag for turning tracing on and off, a choice
for an output stream, maybe some code for formatting the output---these
are all elements that Trace classes have been
known to have. Trace classes may be highly
sophisticated, too, if the task of tracing the execution of a program
demands so.
But developing the support for tracing is just one part of the effort
of inserting tracing into a program, and, most likely, not the biggest
part. The other part of the effort is calling the tracing functions at
appropriate times. In large systems, this interaction with the tracing
support can be overwhelming. Plus, tracing is one of those things that
slows the system down, so these calls should often be pulled out of the
system before the product is shipped. For these reasons, it is not
unusual for developers to write ad-hoc scripting programs that rewrite
the source code by inserting/deleting trace calls before and after the
method bodies.
AspectJ can be used for some of these tracing concerns in a less ad-hoc
way. Tracing can be seen as a concern that crosscuts the entire system
and as such is amenable to encapsulation in an aspect. In addition, it
is fairly independent of what the system is doing. Therefore tracing is
one of those kind of system aspects that can potentially be plugged in
and unplugged without any side-effects in the basic functionality of
the system.
An Example Application
Throughout this example we will use a simple application that contains
only four classes. The application is about shapes. The
TwoDShape class is the root of the shape
hierarchy:
TwoDShape has two subclasses,
Circle and Square:
To run this application, compile the classes. You can do it with or
without ajc, the AspectJ compiler. If you've installed AspectJ, go to
the directory
InstallDir/examples and
type:
ajc -argfile tracing/notrace.lst
To run the program, type
java tracing.ExampleMain
(we don't need anything special on the classpath since this is pure
Java code). You should see the following output:
Tracing—Version 1
In a first attempt to insert tracing in this application, we will start
by writing a Trace class that is exactly what we
would write if we didn't have aspects. The implementation is in
version1/Trace.java. Its public interface is:
If we didn't have AspectJ, we would have to insert calls to
traceEntry and traceExit in all
methods and constructors we wanted to trace, and to initialize
TRACELEVEL and the stream. If we wanted to trace all
the methods and constructors in our example, that would amount to
around 40 calls, and we would hope we had not forgotten any method. But
we can do that more consistently and reliably with the following
aspect (found in version1/TraceMyClasses.java):
This aspect performs the tracing calls at appropriate times. According
to this aspect, tracing is performed at the entrance and exit of every
method and constructor defined within the shape hierarchy.
What is printed at before and after each of the traced
join points is the signature of the method executing. Since the
signature is static information, we can get it through
thisJoinPointStaticPart.
To run this version of tracing, go to the directory
InstallDir/examples and
type:
Running the main method of
tracing.version1.TraceMyClasses should produce
the output:
tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
<-- tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
--> tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
<-- tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
--> tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
<-- tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
--> tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
<-- tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
--> tracing.Circle(double)
<-- tracing.Circle(double)
--> tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
<-- tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
--> tracing.Square(double, double, double)
<-- tracing.Square(double, double, double)
--> tracing.Square(double, double)
<-- tracing.Square(double, double)
--> double tracing.Circle.perimeter()
<-- double tracing.Circle.perimeter()
c1.perimeter() = 12.566370614359172
--> double tracing.Circle.area()
<-- double tracing.Circle.area()
c1.area() = 12.566370614359172
--> double tracing.Square.perimeter()
<-- double tracing.Square.perimeter()
s1.perimeter() = 4.0
--> double tracing.Square.area()
<-- double tracing.Square.area()
s1.area() = 1.0
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
c2.distance(c1) = 4.242640687119285
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
s1.distance(c1) = 2.23606797749979
--> String tracing.Square.toString()
--> String tracing.TwoDShape.toString()
<-- String tracing.TwoDShape.toString()
<-- String tracing.Square.toString()
s1.toString(): Square side = 1.0 @ (1.0, 2.0)
]]>
When TraceMyClasses.java is not provided to
ajc, the aspect does not have any affect on the
system and the tracing is unplugged.
Tracing—Version 2
Another way to accomplish the same thing would be to write a reusable
tracing aspect that can be used not only for these application classes,
but for any class. One way to do this is to merge the tracing
functionality of Trace—version1 with the
crosscutting support of
TraceMyClasses—version1. We end up with a
Trace aspect (found in
version2/Trace.java) with the following public
interface
In order to use it, we need to define our own subclass that knows about
our application classes, in version2/TraceMyClasses.java:
Notice that we've simply made the pointcut classes,
that was an abstract pointcut in the super-aspect, concrete. To run
this version of tracing, go to the directory
examples and type:
The file tracev2.lst lists the application classes as well as this
version of the files Trace.java and TraceMyClasses.java. Running the
main method of tracing.version2.TraceMyClasses
should output exactly the same trace information as that from version
1.
The entire implementation of the new Trace class
is:
" + str);
}
private static void printExiting(String str) {
printIndent();
stream.println("<-- " + str);
}
private static void printIndent() {
for (int i = 0; i < callDepth; i++)
stream.print(" ");
}
// protocol part
abstract pointcut myClass();
pointcut myConstructor(): myClass() && execution(new(..));
pointcut myMethod(): myClass() && execution(* *(..));
before(): myConstructor() {
traceEntry("" + thisJoinPointStaticPart.getSignature());
}
after(): myConstructor() {
traceExit("" + thisJoinPointStaticPart.getSignature());
}
before(): myMethod() {
traceEntry("" + thisJoinPointStaticPart.getSignature());
}
after(): myMethod() {
traceExit("" + thisJoinPointStaticPart.getSignature());
}
}
]]>
This version differs from version 1 in several subtle ways. The first
thing to notice is that this Trace class merges
the functional part of tracing with the crosscutting of the tracing
calls. That is, in version 1, there was a sharp separation between the
tracing support (the class Trace) and the
crosscutting usage of it (by the class
TraceMyClasses). In this version those two
things are merged. That's why the description of this class explicitly
says that "Trace messages are printed before and after constructors and
methods are," which is what we wanted in the first place. That is, the
placement of the calls, in this version, is established by the aspect
class itself, leaving less opportunity for misplacing calls.
A consequence of this is that there is no need for providing traceEntry
and traceExit as public operations of this class. You can see that they
were classified as protected. They are supposed to be internal
implementation details of the advice.
The key piece of this aspect is the abstract pointcut classes that
serves as the base for the definition of the pointcuts constructors and
methods. Even though classes is abstract, and
therefore no concrete classes are mentioned, we can put advice on it,
as well as on the pointcuts that are based on it. The idea is "we don't
know exactly what the pointcut will be, but when we do, here's what we
want to do with it." In some ways, abstract pointcuts are similar to
abstract methods. Abstract methods don't provide the implementation,
but you know that the concrete subclasses will, so you can invoke those
methods.
Production Aspects
A Bean Aspect
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/bean.)
This example examines an aspect that makes Point objects into a Java beans
with bound properties.
Introduction
Java beans are reusable software components that can be visually
manipulated in a builder tool. The requirements for an object to be a
bean are few. Beans must define a no-argument constructor and must be
either Serializable or
Externalizable. Any properties of the object
that are to be treated as bean properties should be indicated by the
presence of appropriate get and
set methods whose names are
getproperty and
set property
where property is the name of a field in the bean
class. Some bean properties, known as bound properties, fire events
whenever their values change so that any registered listeners (such as,
other beans) will be informed of those changes. Making a bound property
involves keeping a list of registered listeners, and creating and
dispatching event objects in methods that change the property values,
such as setproperty methods.
Point is a simple class representing points with
rectangular coordinates. Point does not know
anything about being a bean: there are set methods for
x and y but they do not fire
events, and the class is not serializable. Bound is an aspect that
makes Point a serializable class and makes its
get and set methods support the
bound property protocol.
The Class Point
The class Point is a very simple class with
trivial getters and setters, and a simple vector offset method.
The Aspect BoundPoint
The aspect BoundPoint adds "beanness" to
Point objects. The first thing it does is
privately introduce a reference to an instance of
PropertyChangeSupport into all
Point objects. The property change
support object must be constructed with a reference to the bean for
which it is providing support, so it is initialized by passing it this,
an instance of Point. The support field is
privately introduced, so only the code in the aspect can refer to it.
Methods for registering and managing listeners for property change
events are introduced into Point by the
introductions. These methods delegate the work to the
property change support object.
The introduction also makes Point implement the
Serializable interface. Implementing
Serializable does not require any methods to be
implemented. Serialization for Point objects is
provided by the default serialization method.
The pointcut setters names the
set methods: reception by a
Point object of any method whose name begins
with 'set' and takes one parameter. The around
advice on setters() stores the values
of the X and Y properties, calls
the original set method and then fires the
appropriate property change event according to which set method was
called. Note that the call to the method proceed needs to pass along
the Point p. The rule of thumb is that context that
an around advice exposes must be passed forward to continue.
The Test Program
The test program registers itself as a property change listener to a
Point object that it creates and then performs
simple manipulation of that point: calling its set methods and the
offset method. Then it serializes the point and writes it to a file and
then reads it back. The result of saving and restoring the point is that
a new point is created.
Compiling and Running the Example
To compile and run this example, go to the examples directory and type:
The Subject/Observer Protocol
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/observer.)
This demo illustrates how the Subject/Observer design pattern can be
coded with aspects.
Overview
The demo consists of the following: A colored label is a renderable
object that has a color that cycles through a set of colors, and a
number that records the number of cycles it has been through. A button
is an action item that records when it is clicked.
With these two kinds of objects, we can build up a Subject/Observer
relationship in which colored labels observe the clicks of buttons;
that is, where colored labels are the observers and buttons are the
subjects.
The demo is designed and implemented using the Subject/Observer design
pattern. The remainder of this example explains the classes and aspects
of this demo, and tells you how to run it.
Generic Components
The generic parts of the protocol are the interfaces
Subject and Observer, and
the abstract aspect SubjectObserverProtocol. The
Subject interface is simple, containing methods
to add, remove, and view Observer objects, and a
method for getting data about state changes:
The Observer interface is just as simple,
with methods to set and get Subject objects, and
a method to call when the subject gets updated.
The SubjectObserverProtocol aspect contains
within it all of the generic parts of the protocol, namely, how to fire
the Observer objects' update methods when some
state changes in a subject.
Note that this aspect does three things. It define an abstract pointcut
that extending aspects can override. It defines advice that should run
after the join points of the pointcut. And it introduces state and
behavior onto the Subject and
Observer interfaces.
Application Classes
Button objects extend
java.awt.Button, and all they do is make sure
the void click() method is called whenever a button
is clicked.
Note that this class knows nothing about being a Subject.
ColorLabel objects are labels that support the void colorCycle()
method. Again, they know nothing about being an observer.
Finally, the SubjectObserverProtocolImpl
implements the subject/observer protocol, with
Button objects as subjects and
ColorLabel objects as observers:
It does this by introducing the appropriate interfaces onto the
Button and ColorLabel
classes, making sure the methods required by the interfaces are
implemented, and providing a definition for the
stateChanges pointcut. Now, every time a
Button is clicked, all
ColorLabel objects observing that button will
colorCycle.
Compiling and Running
Demo is the top class that starts this
demo. It instantiates a two buttons and three observers and links them
together as subjects and observers. So to run the demo, go to the
examples directory and type:
A Simple Telecom Simulation
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/telecom.)
This example illustrates some ways that dependent concerns can be encoded
with aspects. It uses an example system comprising a simple model of
telephone connections to which timing and billing features are added
using aspects, where the billing feature depends upon the timing feature.
The Application
The example application is a simple simulation of a telephony system in
which customers make, accept, merge and hang-up both local and long
distance calls. The application architecture is in three layers.
The basic objects provide basic functionality to simulate
customers, calls and connections (regular calls have one
connection, conference calls have more than one).
The timing feature is concerned with timing the connections and
keeping the total connection time per customer. Aspects are used to
add a timer to each connection and to manage the total time per
customer.
The billing feature is concerned with charging customers for the
calls they make. Aspects are used to calculate a charge per
connection and, upon termination of a connection, to add the charge
to the appropriate customer's bill. The billing aspect builds upon
the timing aspect: it uses a pointcut defined in Timing and it uses
the timers that are associated with connections.
The simulation of system has three configurations: basic, timing and
billing. Programs for the three configurations are in classes
BasicSimulation,
TimingSimulation and
BillingSimulation. These share a common
superclass AbstractSimulation, which defines the
method run with the simulation itself and the method wait used to
simulate elapsed time.
The Basic Objects
The telecom simulation comprises the classes
Customer, Call and the
abstract class Connection with its two concrete
subclasses Local and
LongDistance. Customers have a name and a
numeric area code. They also have methods for managing calls. Simple
calls are made between one customer (the caller) and another (the
receiver), a Connection object is used to
connect them. Conference calls between more than two customers will
involve more than one connection. A customer may be involved in many
calls at one time.
The Class Customer
Customer has methods call,
pickup, hangup and
merge for managing calls.
The Class Call
Calls are created with a caller and receiver who are customers. If the
caller and receiver have the same area code then the call can be
established with a Local connection (see below),
otherwise a LongDistance connection is required.
A call comprises a number of connections between customers. Initially
there is only the connection between the caller and receiver but
additional connections can be added if calls are merged to form
conference calls.
The Class Connection
The class Connection models the physical
details of establishing a connection between customers. It does this
with a simple state machine (connections are initially
PENDING, then COMPLETED and
finally DROPPED). Messages are printed to the
console so that the state of connections can be observed. Connection is
an abstract class with two concrete subclasses:
Local and LongDistance.
The Class Local
The Class LongDistance
Compiling and Running the Basic Simulation
The source files for the basic system are listed in the file
basic.lst. To build and run the basic system, in a
shell window, type these commands:
Timing
The Timing aspect keeps track of total
connection time for each Customer by starting
and stopping a timer associated with each connection. It uses some
helper classes:
The Class Timer
A Timer object simply records the current time
when it is started and stopped, and returns their difference when
asked for the elapsed time. The aspect
TimerLog (below) can be used to cause the
start and stop times to be printed to standard output.
The Aspect TimerLog
The aspect TimerLog can be included in a
build to get the timer to announce when it is started and stopped.
The Aspect Timing
The aspect Timing introduces attribute
totalConnectTime into the class
Customer to store the accumulated connection
time per Customer. It introduces attribute
timer into Connection to associate a timer
with each Connection. Two pieces of after
advice ensure that the timer is started when a connection is
completed and and stopped when it is dropped. The pointcut
endTiming is defined so that it can be used by the
Billing aspect.
Billing
The Billing system adds billing functionality to the telecom
application on top of timing.
The Aspect Billing
The aspect Billing introduces attribute
payer into Connection
to indicate who initiated the call and therefore who is
responsible to pay for it. It also introduces method
callRate into Connection
so that local and long distance calls can be charged
differently. The call charge must be calculated after the timer is
stopped; the after advice on pointcut
Timing.endTiming does this and
Billing dominates Timing to make
sure that this advice runs after Timing's
advice on the same join point. It introduces attribute
totalCharge and its associated methods into
Customer (to manage the
customer's bill information.
Accessing the Introduced State
Both the aspects Timing and
Billing contain the definition of operations
that the rest of the system may want to access. For example, when
running the simulation with one or both aspects, we want to find out
how much time each customer spent on the telephone and how big their
bill is. That information is also stored in the classes, but they are
accessed through static methods of the aspects, since the state they
refer to is private to the aspect.
Take a look at the file TimingSimulation.java. The
most important method of this class is the method
report(Customer c), which is used in the method
run of the superclass AbstractSimulation. This
method is intended to print out the status of the customer, with
respect to the Timing feature.
Compiling and Running
The files timing.lst and billing.lst contain file lists for the timing
and billing configurations. To build and run the application with only
the timing feature, go to the directory examples and type:
To build and run the application with the timing and billing features,
go to the directory examples and type:
Discussion
There are some explicit dependencies between the aspects Billing and
Timing:
Billing is declared to dominate Timing so that Billing's after
advice runs after that of Timing when they are on the same join
point.
Billing uses the pointcut Timing.endTiming.
Billing needs access to the timer associated with a connection.
Reusable Aspects
Tracing Aspects Revisited
(The code for this example is in
InstallDir/examples/tracing.)
Tracing—Version 3
One advantage of not exposing the methods traceEntry and traceExit as
public operations is that we can easily change their interface without
any dramatic consequences in the rest of the code.
Consider, again, the program without AspectJ. Suppose, for example,
that at some point later the requirements for tracing change, stating
that the trace messages should always include the string representation
of the object whose methods are being traced. This can be achieved in
at least two ways. One way is keep the interface of the methods
traceEntry and traceExit as it
was before,
In this case, the caller is responsible for ensuring that the string
representation of the object is part of the string given as argument.
So, calls must look like:
Another way is to enforce the requirement with a second argument in the
trace operations, e.g.
In this case, the caller is still responsible for sending the right
object, but at least there is some guarantees that some object will be
passed. The calls will look like:
In either case, this change to the requirements of tracing will have
dramatic consequences in the rest of the code -- every call to the
trace operations traceEntry and traceExit must be changed!
Here's another advantage of doing tracing with an aspect. We've already
seen that in version 2 traceEntry and
traceExit are not publicly exposed. So changing
their interfaces, or the way they are used, has only a small effect
inside the Trace class. Here's a partial view at
the implementation of Trace, version 3. The
differences with respect to version 2 are stressed in the
comments:
As you can see, we decided to apply the first design by preserving the
interface of the methods traceEntry and
traceExit. But it doesn't matter—we could as
easily have applied the second design (the code in the directory
examples/tracing/version3 has the second design).
The point is that the effects of this change in the tracing
requirements are limited to the Trace aspect
class.
One implementation change worth noticing is the specification of the
pointcuts. They now expose the object. To maintain full consistency
with the behavior of version 2, we should have included tracing for
static methods, by defining another pointcut for static methods and
advising it. We leave that as an exercise.
Moreover, we had to exclude the execution join point of the method
toString from the methods
pointcut. The problem here is that toString is being
called from inside the advice. Therefore if we trace it, we will end
up in an infinite recursion of calls. This is a subtle point, and one
that you must be aware when writing advice. If the advice calls back to
the objects, there is always the possibility of recursion. Keep that in
mind!
In fact, esimply excluding the execution join point may not be enough,
if there are calls to other traced methods within it -- in which case,
the restriction should be
excluding both the execution of toString methods and all join points
under that execution.
In summary, to implement the change in the tracing requirements we had
to make a couple of changes in the implementation of the
Trace aspect class, including changing the
specification of the pointcuts. That's only natural. But the
implementation changes were limited to this aspect. Without aspects, we
would have to change the implementation of every application class.
Finally, to run this version of tracing, go to the directory
examples and type:
The file tracev3.lst lists the application classes as well as this
version of the files Trace.java and
TraceMyClasses.java. To run the program, type
The output should be:
tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
<-- tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
--> tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
<-- tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
--> tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
<-- tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
--> tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
<-- tracing.Circle(double, double, double)
--> tracing.Circle(double)
<-- tracing.Circle(double)
--> tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
<-- tracing.TwoDShape(double, double)
--> tracing.Square(double, double, double)
<-- tracing.Square(double, double, double)
--> tracing.Square(double, double)
<-- tracing.Square(double, double)
--> double tracing.Circle.perimeter()
<-- double tracing.Circle.perimeter()
c1.perimeter() = 12.566370614359172
--> double tracing.Circle.area()
<-- double tracing.Circle.area()
c1.area() = 12.566370614359172
--> double tracing.Square.perimeter()
<-- double tracing.Square.perimeter()
s1.perimeter() = 4.0
--> double tracing.Square.area()
<-- double tracing.Square.area()
s1.area() = 1.0
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
c2.distance(c1) = 4.242640687119285
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getX()
--> double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.getY()
<-- double tracing.TwoDShape.distance(TwoDShape)
s1.distance(c1) = 2.23606797749979
--> String tracing.Square.toString()
--> String tracing.TwoDShape.toString()
<-- String tracing.TwoDShape.toString()
<-- String tracing.Square.toString()
s1.toString(): Square side = 1.0 @ (1.0, 2.0)
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