Question

Spring AOP has a method-level tracer called CustomizableTraceInterceptor. Using Spring’s XML configuration approach, one would set up this tracer like so:

<bean id="customizableTraceInterceptor" class="
  org.springframework.aop.interceptor.CustomizableTraceInterceptor">
  <property name="enterMessage" value="Entering $[methodName]($[arguments])"/>
  <property name="exitMessage" value="Leaving $[methodName](): $[returnValue]"/>
</bean>

<aop:config>
  <aop:advisor advice-ref="customizableTraceInterceptor"
    pointcut="execution(public * org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository+.*(..))"/>
</aop:config>

I would like to set up above configuration using Spring’s JavaConfig style (i.e. taking advantage of Java annotations, especially @EnableAspectJAutoProxy for activating AspectJ in JavaConfig).

@Configuration
@EnableTransactionManagement
@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages = { "some.package" })
@ComponentScan(basePackages = { "some.package2", "some.package3" })
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy
public class FacebookDomainConfiguration {

    @Bean someBean() {
    ...
    }
...
}

What is the @EnableAspectJAutoProxy-style equivalent for <aop:advisor advice-ref="customizableTraceInterceptor" ...>?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, you cannot because the Java language does not support method literals which would be needed to support this in Spring JavaConfig. A bug was opened for this but marked as “Won’t Fix”: https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-8148.

The two options mentioned in the bug report are:

1. Continue using <aop:config> by including the relevant XML snippet using @ImportResource
2. Convert any existing <aop:config> elemements to use @Aspect style. [which is not possible with the CustomizableTraceInterceptor]