Question

I have a simple marker annotation for methods (similar to the first example in Item 35 in Effective Java (2nd ed)):

/**
 * Marker annotation for methods that are called from installer's 
 * validation scripts etc. 
 */
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.METHOD)
public @interface InstallerMethod {
}

Then, in a given package (say com.acme.installer), which has a few subpackages containing some 20 classes, I’d like to find all methods that are annotated with it. (Because I’d like to do some checks regarding all the annotated methods in a unit test.)

What (if any) is the easiest way to do this? Preferably without adding new 3rd party libraries or frameworks.

Edit: to clarify, obviously method.isAnnotationPresent(InstallerMethod.class) will be the way to check if a method has the annotation – but this problem includes finding all the methods.

Answer 1

If you want to implement it yourself, these methods will find all the classes in a given package:

/**
 * Scans all classes accessible from the context class loader which belong
 * to the given package and subpackages.
 * 
 * @param packageName
 *            The base package
 * @return The classes
 * @throws ClassNotFoundException
 * @throws IOException
 */
private Iterable<Class> getClasses(String packageName) throws ClassNotFoundException, IOException
{
    ClassLoader classLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
    String path = packageName.replace('.', '/');
    Enumeration<URL> resources = classLoader.getResources(path);
    List<File> dirs = new ArrayList<File>();
    while (resources.hasMoreElements())
    {
        URL resource = resources.nextElement();
        URI uri = new URI(resource.toString());
        dirs.add(new File(uri.getPath()));
    }
    List<Class> classes = new ArrayList<Class>();
    for (File directory : dirs)
    {
        classes.addAll(findClasses(directory, packageName));
    }

    return classes;
}

/**
 * Recursive method used to find all classes in a given directory and
 * subdirs.
 * 
 * @param directory
 *            The base directory
 * @param packageName
 *            The package name for classes found inside the base directory
 * @return The classes
 * @throws ClassNotFoundException
 */
private List<Class> findClasses(File directory, String packageName) throws ClassNotFoundException
{
    List<Class> classes = new ArrayList<Class>();
    if (!directory.exists())
    {
        return classes;
    }
    File[] files = directory.listFiles();
    for (File file : files)
    {
        if (file.isDirectory())
        {
            classes.addAll(findClasses(file, packageName + "." + file.getName()));
        }
        else if (file.getName().endsWith(".class"))
        {
            classes.add(Class.forName(packageName + '.' + file.getName().substring(0, file.getName().length() - 6)));
        }
    }
    return classes;
}

Then you can just filter on those classes with the given annotation:

for (Method method : testClass.getMethods())
{
    if (method.isAnnotationPresent(InstallerMethod.class))
    {
        // do something
    }
}