Question

Consider this @PointCut which gets triggered if a method is annotated with an @Secure annotation:

@Pointcut("execution(@Secure * *(..)) && @annotation(secure)")
public void accessOperation(final Access access) { }

This works perfectly well for methods like:

class Foo {
    @Secure
    public void secureMethod() { }
}

But is it possible to have a Pointcut which also gets triggered when the annotation only exists in a superclass/interface like this?

interface Foo {

    @Secure
    public void secureMethod();
}

class SubFoo implements Foo {

    @Override
    public void secureMethod() {  // <--- execution of this method should be caught
        /* .... */
    }
}

EDIT:

This seems to be very closely related to: @AspectJ pointcut for subclasses of a class with an annotation

The only difference is that they use a class-level annotation, whereas I need a method-level annotation.

Answer 1

I don’t know how AspectJ deals with annotations in such a scenario, but if he only checks the implementing class for a certain annotation, and that annotation is only found on the interface that the class implements, Java will report that infact that annoation is not present on the class method. You should annotate your annotation with @Inherited:

http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/annotation/Inherited.html

maybe this will do the trick (though in this case you should make sure that your Advice is not called multiple times).