Home/ Questions/Q 64663
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-10T18:49:30+00:00

If a class defined an annotation, is it somehow possible to force its subclass

  • 0

If a class defined an annotation, is it somehow possible to force its subclass to define the same annotation?

For instance, we have a simple class/subclass pair that share the @Author @interface. What I’d like to do is force each further subclass to define the same @Author annotation, preventing a RuntimeException somewhere down the road.

TestClass.java:

import java.lang.annotation.*;  @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME) @interface Author { String name(); }  @Author( name = 'foo' ) public abstract class TestClass {     public static String getInfo( Class<? extends TestClass> c )     {         return c.getAnnotation( Author.class ).name();     }      public static void main( String[] args )     {         System.out.println( 'The test class was written by '                         + getInfo( TestClass.class ) );         System.out.println( 'The test subclass was written by '                          + getInfo( TestSubClass.class ) );     } }

TestSubClass.java:

@Author( name = 'bar' ) public abstract class TestSubClass extends TestClass {}

I know I can enumerate all annotations at runtime and check for the missing @Author, but I’d really like to do this at compile time, if possible.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

    • 0