Question

I will use a specific example to make it easier to understand.

Rather than using:

Annotation[] annotations = method.getAnnotations();

I’d like to be able to get an array of the class types associated with each annotation:

Class<?>[] annotationClasses = method.getAnnotationTypes();

Is there a way to override the Method class and add my custom method that will use getAnnotations to collect the annotations, but return the class type instead of an Annotation type?

Answer 1

There is no way to do exactly what you are requesting. Method is final and can not be extended.

However, you could do

Class < ? > [ ] getDeclaredAnnotations ( Method method )
{
       Annotation [ ] as = method . getDeclaredAnnotations ( ) ;
       Class < ? > [ ] bs = new Class < ? > [ as . length ] ;
       for ( int i = 0 ; i < as . length ; i ++ )
       {
              Annotation a = as [ i ] ;
              b [ i ] = a ;
       }
       return bs ;
}