[[aop-using-aspectj]]
= Using AspectJ with Spring Applications

Everything we have covered so far in this chapter is pure Spring AOP. In this section,
we look at how you can use the AspectJ compiler or weaver instead of or in
addition to Spring AOP if your needs go beyond the facilities offered by Spring AOP
alone.

Spring ships with a small AspectJ aspect library, which is available stand-alone in your
distribution as `spring-aspects.jar`. You need to add this to your classpath in order
to use the aspects in it. xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-atconfigurable[Using AspectJ to Dependency Inject Domain Objects with Spring] and xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-ajlib-other[Other Spring aspects for AspectJ] discuss the
content of this library and how you can use it. xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-aj-configure[Configuring AspectJ Aspects by Using Spring IoC] discusses how to
dependency inject AspectJ aspects that are woven using the AspectJ compiler. Finally,
xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-aj-ltw[Load-time Weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework] provides an introduction to load-time weaving for Spring applications
that use AspectJ.



[[aop-atconfigurable]]
== Using AspectJ to Dependency Inject Domain Objects with Spring

The Spring container instantiates and configures beans defined in your application
context. It is also possible to ask a bean factory to configure a pre-existing
object, given the name of a bean definition that contains the configuration to be applied.
`spring-aspects.jar` contains an annotation-driven aspect that exploits this
capability to allow dependency injection of any object. The support is intended to
be used for objects created outside of the control of any container. Domain objects
often fall into this category because they are often created programmatically with the
`new` operator or by an ORM tool as a result of a database query.

The `@Configurable` annotation marks a class as being eligible for Spring-driven
configuration. In the simplest case, you can use purely it as a marker annotation, as the
following example shows:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz.domain;

	import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Configurable;

	@Configurable
	public class Account {
		// ...
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz.domain

	import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Configurable

	@Configurable
	class Account {
		// ...
	}
----
======

When used as a marker interface in this way, Spring configures new instances of the
annotated type (`Account`, in this case) by using a bean definition (typically
prototype-scoped) with the same name as the fully-qualified type name
(`com.xyz.domain.Account`). Since the default name for a bean defined via XML is the
fully-qualified name of its type, a convenient way to declare the prototype definition
is to omit the `id` attribute, as the following example shows:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<bean class="com.xyz.domain.Account" scope="prototype">
		<property name="fundsTransferService" ref="fundsTransferService"/>
	</bean>
----

If you want to explicitly specify the name of the prototype bean definition to use, you
can do so directly in the annotation, as the following example shows:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz.domain;

	import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Configurable;

	@Configurable("account")
	public class Account {
		// ...
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz.domain

	import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Configurable

	@Configurable("account")
	class Account {
		// ...
	}
----
======

Spring now looks for a bean definition named `account` and uses that as the
definition to configure new `Account` instances.

You can also use autowiring to avoid having to specify a dedicated bean definition at
all. To have Spring apply autowiring, use the `autowire` property of the `@Configurable`
annotation. You can specify either `@Configurable(autowire=Autowire.BY_TYPE)` or
`@Configurable(autowire=Autowire.BY_NAME)` for autowiring by type or by name,
respectively. As an alternative, it is preferable to specify explicit, annotation-driven
dependency injection for your `@Configurable` beans through `@Autowired` or `@Inject`
at the field or method level (see xref:core/beans/annotation-config.adoc[Annotation-based Container Configuration] for further details).

Finally, you can enable Spring dependency checking for the object references in the newly
created and configured object by using the `dependencyCheck` attribute (for example,
`@Configurable(autowire=Autowire.BY_NAME,dependencyCheck=true)`). If this attribute is
set to `true`, Spring validates after configuration that all properties (which
are not primitives or collections) have been set.

Note that using the annotation on its own does nothing. It is the
`AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect` in `spring-aspects.jar` that acts on the presence of
the annotation. In essence, the aspect says, "after returning from the initialization of
a new object of a type annotated with `@Configurable`, configure the newly created object
using Spring in accordance with the properties of the annotation". In this context,
"initialization" refers to newly instantiated objects (for example, objects instantiated
with the `new` operator) as well as to `Serializable` objects that are undergoing
deserialization (for example, through
{java-api}/java.base/java/io/Serializable.html[readResolve()]).

[NOTE]
=====
One of the key phrases in the above paragraph is "in essence". For most cases, the
exact semantics of "after returning from the initialization of a new object" are
fine. In this context, "after initialization" means that the dependencies are
injected after the object has been constructed. This means that the dependencies
are not available for use in the constructor bodies of the class. If you want the
dependencies to be injected before the constructor bodies run and thus be
available for use in the body of the constructors, you need to define this on the
`@Configurable` declaration, as follows:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	@Configurable(preConstruction = true)
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	@Configurable(preConstruction = true)
----
======

You can find more information about the language semantics of the various pointcut
types in AspectJ
{aspectj-docs-progguide}/semantics-joinPoints.html[in this appendix] of the
{aspectj-docs-progguide}/index.html[AspectJ Programming Guide].
=====

For this to work, the annotated types must be woven with the AspectJ weaver. You can
either use a build-time Ant or Maven task to do this (see, for example, the
{aspectj-docs-devguide}/antTasks.html[AspectJ Development
Environment Guide]) or load-time weaving (see xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-aj-ltw[Load-time Weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework]). The
`AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect` itself needs to be configured by Spring (in order to obtain
a reference to the bean factory that is to be used to configure new objects). You can define
the related configuration as follows:

include-code::./ApplicationConfiguration[tag=snippet,indent=0]

Instances of `@Configurable` objects created before the aspect has been configured
result in a message being issued to the debug log and no configuration of the
object taking place. An example might be a bean in the Spring configuration that creates
domain objects when it is initialized by Spring. In this case, you can use the
`depends-on` bean attribute to manually specify that the bean depends on the
configuration aspect. The following example shows how to use the `depends-on` attribute:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<bean id="myService"
			class="com.xyz.service.MyService"
			depends-on="org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect">

		<!-- ... -->

	</bean>
----

NOTE: Do not activate `@Configurable` processing through the bean configurer aspect unless you
really mean to rely on its semantics at runtime. In particular, make sure that you do
not use `@Configurable` on bean classes that are registered as regular Spring beans
with the container. Doing so results in double initialization, once through the
container and once through the aspect.


[[aop-configurable-testing]]
=== Unit Testing `@Configurable` Objects

One of the goals of the `@Configurable` support is to enable independent unit testing
of domain objects without the difficulties associated with hard-coded lookups.
If `@Configurable` types have not been woven by AspectJ, the annotation has no affect
during unit testing. You can set mock or stub property references in the object under
test and proceed as normal. If `@Configurable` types have been woven by AspectJ,
you can still unit test outside of the container as normal, but you see a warning
message each time that you construct a `@Configurable` object indicating that it has
not been configured by Spring.


[[aop-configurable-container]]
=== Working with Multiple Application Contexts

The `AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect` that is used to implement the `@Configurable` support
is an AspectJ singleton aspect. The scope of a singleton aspect is the same as the scope
of `static` members: There is one aspect instance per `ClassLoader` that defines the type.
This means that, if you define multiple application contexts within the same `ClassLoader`
hierarchy, you need to consider where to define the `@EnableSpringConfigured` bean and
where to place `spring-aspects.jar` on the classpath.

Consider a typical Spring web application configuration that has a shared parent application
context that defines common business services, everything needed to support those services,
and one child application context for each servlet (which contains definitions particular
to that servlet). All of these contexts co-exist within the same `ClassLoader` hierarchy,
and so the `AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect` can hold a reference to only one of them.
In this case, we recommend defining the `@EnableSpringConfigured` bean in the shared
(parent) application context. This defines the services that you are likely to want to
inject into domain objects. A consequence is that you cannot configure domain objects
with references to beans defined in the child (servlet-specific) contexts by using the
@Configurable mechanism (which is probably not something you want to do anyway).

When deploying multiple web applications within the same container, ensure that each
web application loads the types in `spring-aspects.jar` by using its own `ClassLoader`
(for example, by placing `spring-aspects.jar` in `WEB-INF/lib`). If `spring-aspects.jar`
is added only to the container-wide classpath (and hence loaded by the shared parent
`ClassLoader`), all web applications share the same aspect instance (which is probably
not what you want).



[[aop-ajlib-other]]
== Other Spring aspects for AspectJ

In addition to the `@Configurable` aspect, `spring-aspects.jar` contains an AspectJ
aspect that you can use to drive Spring's transaction management for types and methods
annotated with the `@Transactional` annotation. This is primarily intended for users who
want to use the Spring Framework's transaction support outside of the Spring container.

The aspect that interprets `@Transactional` annotations is the
`AnnotationTransactionAspect`. When you use this aspect, you must annotate the
implementation class (or methods within that class or both), not the interface (if
any) that the class implements. AspectJ follows Java's rule that annotations on
interfaces are not inherited.

A `@Transactional` annotation on a class specifies the default transaction semantics for
the execution of any public operation in the class.

A `@Transactional` annotation on a method within the class overrides the default
transaction semantics given by the class annotation (if present). Methods of any
visibility may be annotated, including private methods. Annotating non-public methods
directly is the only way to get transaction demarcation for the execution of such methods.

TIP: Since Spring Framework 4.2, `spring-aspects` provides a similar aspect that offers the
exact same features for the standard `jakarta.transaction.Transactional` annotation. Check
`JtaAnnotationTransactionAspect` for more details.

For AspectJ programmers who want to use the Spring configuration and transaction
management support but do not want to (or cannot) use annotations, `spring-aspects.jar`
also contains `abstract` aspects you can extend to provide your own pointcut
definitions. See the sources for the `AbstractBeanConfigurerAspect` and
`AbstractTransactionAspect` aspects for more information. As an example, the following
excerpt shows how you could write an aspect to configure all instances of objects
defined in the domain model by using prototype bean definitions that match the
fully qualified class names:

[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	public aspect DomainObjectConfiguration extends AbstractBeanConfigurerAspect {

		public DomainObjectConfiguration() {
			setBeanWiringInfoResolver(new ClassNameBeanWiringInfoResolver());
		}

		// the creation of a new bean (any object in the domain model)
		protected pointcut beanCreation(Object beanInstance) :
			initialization(new(..)) &&
			CommonPointcuts.inDomainModel() &&
			this(beanInstance);
	}
----



[[aop-aj-configure]]
== Configuring AspectJ Aspects by Using Spring IoC

When you use AspectJ aspects with Spring applications, it is natural to both want and
expect to be able to configure such aspects with Spring. The AspectJ runtime itself is
responsible for aspect creation, and the means of configuring the AspectJ-created
aspects through Spring depends on the AspectJ instantiation model (the `per-xxx` clause)
used by the aspect.

The majority of AspectJ aspects are singleton aspects. Configuration of these
aspects is easy. You can create a bean definition that references the aspect type as
normal and include the `factory-method="aspectOf"` bean attribute. This ensures that
Spring obtains the aspect instance by asking AspectJ for it rather than trying to create
an instance itself. The following example shows how to use the `factory-method="aspectOf"` attribute:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<bean id="profiler" class="com.xyz.profiler.Profiler"
			factory-method="aspectOf"> <1>

		<property name="profilingStrategy" ref="jamonProfilingStrategy"/>
	</bean>
----
<1> Note the `factory-method="aspectOf"` attribute


Non-singleton aspects are harder to configure. However, it is possible to do so by
creating prototype bean definitions and using the `@Configurable` support from
`spring-aspects.jar` to configure the aspect instances once they have bean created by
the AspectJ runtime.

If you have some @AspectJ aspects that you want to weave with AspectJ (for example,
using load-time weaving for domain model types) and other @AspectJ aspects that you want
to use with Spring AOP, and these aspects are all configured in Spring, you
need to tell the Spring AOP @AspectJ auto-proxying support which exact subset of the
@AspectJ aspects defined in the configuration should be used for auto-proxying. You can
do this by using one or more `<include/>` elements inside the `<aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>`
declaration. Each `<include/>` element specifies a name pattern, and only beans with
names matched by at least one of the patterns are used for Spring AOP auto-proxy
configuration. The following example shows how to use `<include/>` elements:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<aop:aspectj-autoproxy>
		<aop:include name="thisBean"/>
		<aop:include name="thatBean"/>
	</aop:aspectj-autoproxy>
----

NOTE: Do not be misled by the name of the `<aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>` element. Using it
results in the creation of Spring AOP proxies. The @AspectJ style of aspect
declaration is being used here, but the AspectJ runtime is not involved.



[[aop-aj-ltw]]
== Load-time Weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework

Load-time weaving (LTW) refers to the process of weaving AspectJ aspects into an
application's class files as they are being loaded into the Java virtual machine (JVM).
The focus of this section is on configuring and using LTW in the specific context of the
Spring Framework. This section is not a general introduction to LTW. For full details on
the specifics of LTW and configuring LTW with only AspectJ (with Spring not being
involved at all), see the
{aspectj-docs-devguide}/ltw.html[LTW section of the AspectJ
Development Environment Guide].

The value that the Spring Framework brings to AspectJ LTW is in enabling much
finer-grained control over the weaving process. 'Vanilla' AspectJ LTW is effected by using
a Java (5+) agent, which is switched on by specifying a VM argument when starting up a
JVM. It is, thus, a JVM-wide setting, which may be fine in some situations but is often a
little too coarse. Spring-enabled LTW lets you switch on LTW on a
per-`ClassLoader` basis, which is more fine-grained and which can make more
sense in a 'single-JVM-multiple-application' environment (such as is found in a typical
application server environment).

Further, xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-aj-ltw-environments[in certain environments], this support enables
load-time weaving without making any modifications to the application server's launch
script that is needed to add `-javaagent:path/to/aspectjweaver.jar` or (as we describe
later in this section) `-javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument.jar`. Developers configure
the application context to enable load-time weaving instead of relying on administrators
who typically are in charge of the deployment configuration, such as the launch script.

Now that the sales pitch is over, let us first walk through a quick example of AspectJ
LTW that uses Spring, followed by detailed specifics about elements introduced in the
example. For a complete example, see the
{petclinic-github-org}/spring-framework-petclinic[Petclinic sample application based on Spring Framework].


[[aop-aj-ltw-first-example]]
=== A First Example

Assume that you are an application developer who has been tasked with diagnosing
the cause of some performance problems in a system. Rather than break out a
profiling tool, we are going to switch on a simple profiling aspect that lets us
quickly get some performance metrics. We can then apply a finer-grained profiling
tool to that specific area immediately afterwards.

NOTE: The example presented here uses XML configuration. You can also configure and
use @AspectJ with xref:core/beans/java.adoc[Java configuration]. Specifically, you can use the
`@EnableLoadTimeWeaving` annotation as an alternative to `<context:load-time-weaver/>`
(see xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-aj-ltw-spring[below] for details).

The following example shows the profiling aspect, which is not fancy.
It is a time-based profiler that uses the @AspectJ-style of aspect declaration:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz;

	import org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
	import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect;
	import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Around;
	import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Pointcut;
	import org.springframework.util.StopWatch;
	import org.springframework.core.annotation.Order;

	@Aspect
	public class ProfilingAspect {

		@Around("methodsToBeProfiled()")
		public Object profile(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
			StopWatch sw = new StopWatch(getClass().getSimpleName());
			try {
				sw.start(pjp.getSignature().getName());
				return pjp.proceed();
			} finally {
				sw.stop();
				System.out.println(sw.prettyPrint());
			}
		}

		@Pointcut("execution(public * com.xyz..*.*(..))")
		public void methodsToBeProfiled(){}
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz

	import org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint
	import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect
	import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Around
	import org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Pointcut
	import org.springframework.util.StopWatch
	import org.springframework.core.annotation.Order

	@Aspect
	class ProfilingAspect {

		@Around("methodsToBeProfiled()")
		fun profile(pjp: ProceedingJoinPoint): Any? {
			val sw = StopWatch(javaClass.simpleName)
			try {
				sw.start(pjp.getSignature().getName())
				return pjp.proceed()
			} finally {
				sw.stop()
				println(sw.prettyPrint())
			}
		}

		@Pointcut("execution(public * com.xyz..*.*(..))")
		fun methodsToBeProfiled() {
		}
	}
----
======

We also need to create an `META-INF/aop.xml` file, to inform the AspectJ weaver that
we want to weave our `ProfilingAspect` into our classes. This file convention, namely
the presence of a file (or files) on the Java classpath called `META-INF/aop.xml` is
standard AspectJ. The following example shows the `aop.xml` file:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<!DOCTYPE aspectj PUBLIC "-//AspectJ//DTD//EN" "https://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/dtd/aspectj.dtd">
	<aspectj>

		<weaver>
			<!-- only weave classes in our application-specific packages and sub-packages -->
			<include within="com.xyz..*"/>
		</weaver>

		<aspects>
			<!-- weave in just this aspect -->
			<aspect name="com.xyz.ProfilingAspect"/>
		</aspects>

	</aspectj>
----

NOTE: It is recommended to only weave specific classes (typically those in the
application packages, as shown in the `aop.xml` example above) in order
to avoid side effects such as AspectJ dump files and warnings.
This is also a best practice from an efficiency perspective.

Now we can move on to the Spring-specific portion of the configuration. We need
to configure a `LoadTimeWeaver` (explained later). This load-time weaver is the
essential component responsible for weaving the aspect configuration in one or
more `META-INF/aop.xml` files into the classes in your application. The good
thing is that it does not require a lot of configuration (there are some more
options that you can specify, but these are detailed later), as can be seen in
the following example:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
		xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
		xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
		xsi:schemaLocation="
			http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
			https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
			http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
			https://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

		<!-- a service object; we will be profiling its methods -->
		<bean id="entitlementCalculationService"
				class="com.xyz.StubEntitlementCalculationService"/>

		<!-- this switches on the load-time weaving -->
		<context:load-time-weaver/>
	</beans>
----

Now that all the required artifacts (the aspect, the `META-INF/aop.xml`
file, and the Spring configuration) are in place, we can create the following
driver class with a `main(..)` method to demonstrate the LTW in action:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz;

	// imports

	public class Main {

		public static void main(String[] args) {
			ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");

			EntitlementCalculationService service =
					ctx.getBean(EntitlementCalculationService.class);

			// the profiling aspect is 'woven' around this method execution
			service.calculateEntitlement();
		}
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz

	// imports

	fun main() {
		val ctx = ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml")

		val service = ctx.getBean(EntitlementCalculationService.class)

		// the profiling aspect is 'woven' around this method execution
		service.calculateEntitlement()
	}
----
======

We have one last thing to do. The introduction to this section did say that one could
switch on LTW selectively on a per-`ClassLoader` basis with Spring, and this is true.
However, for this example, we use a Java agent (supplied with Spring) to switch on LTW.
We use the following command to run the `Main` class shown earlier:

[literal,subs="verbatim"]
----
java -javaagent:C:/projects/xyz/lib/spring-instrument.jar com.xyz.Main
----

The `-javaagent` is a flag for specifying and enabling
{java-api}/java.instrument/java/lang/instrument/package-summary.html[agents
to instrument programs that run on the JVM]. The Spring Framework ships with such an
agent, the `InstrumentationSavingAgent`, which is packaged in the
`spring-instrument.jar` that was supplied as the value of the `-javaagent` argument in
the preceding example.

The output from the execution of the `Main` program looks something like the next example.
(I have introduced a `Thread.sleep(..)` statement into the `calculateEntitlement()`
implementation so that the profiler actually captures something other than 0
milliseconds (the `01234` milliseconds is not an overhead introduced by the AOP).
The following listing shows the output we got when we ran our profiler:

[literal,subs="verbatim"]
----
Calculating entitlement

StopWatch 'ProfilingAspect': running time (millis) = 1234
------ ----- ----------------------------
ms     %     Task name
------ ----- ----------------------------
01234  100%  calculateEntitlement
----

Since this LTW is effected by using full-blown AspectJ, we are not limited only to advising
Spring beans. The following slight variation on the `Main` program yields the same
result:

[tabs]
======
Java::
+
[source,java,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz;

	// imports

	public class Main {

		public static void main(String[] args) {
			new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml");

			EntitlementCalculationService service =
					new StubEntitlementCalculationService();

			// the profiling aspect will be 'woven' around this method execution
			service.calculateEntitlement();
		}
	}
----

Kotlin::
+
[source,kotlin,indent=0,subs="verbatim",chomp="-packages"]
----
	package com.xyz

	// imports

	fun main(args: Array<String>) {
		ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("beans.xml")

		val service = StubEntitlementCalculationService()

		// the profiling aspect will be 'woven' around this method execution
		service.calculateEntitlement()
	}
----
======

Notice how, in the preceding program, we bootstrap the Spring container and
then create a new instance of the `StubEntitlementCalculationService` totally outside
the context of Spring. The profiling advice still gets woven in.

Admittedly, the example is simplistic. However, the basics of the LTW support in Spring
have all been introduced in the earlier example, and the rest of this section explains
the "why" behind each bit of configuration and usage in detail.

NOTE: The `ProfilingAspect` used in this example may be basic, but it is quite useful. It is a
nice example of a development-time aspect that developers can use during development
and then easily exclude from builds of the application being deployed
into UAT or production.


[[aop-aj-ltw-the-aspects]]
=== Aspects

The aspects that you use in LTW have to be AspectJ aspects. You can write them in
either the AspectJ language itself, or you can write your aspects in the @AspectJ-style.
Your aspects are then both valid AspectJ and Spring AOP aspects.
Furthermore, the compiled aspect classes need to be available on the classpath.


[[aop-aj-ltw-aop_dot_xml]]
=== `META-INF/aop.xml`

The AspectJ LTW infrastructure is configured by using one or more `META-INF/aop.xml`
files that are on the Java classpath (either directly or, more typically, in jar files).
For example:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<!DOCTYPE aspectj PUBLIC "-//AspectJ//DTD//EN" "https://www.eclipse.org/aspectj/dtd/aspectj.dtd">
	<aspectj>

		<weaver>
			<!-- only weave classes in our application-specific packages and sub-packages -->
			<include within="com.xyz..*"/>
		</weaver>

	</aspectj>
----

NOTE: It is recommended to only weave specific classes (typically those in the
application packages, as shown in the `aop.xml` example above) in order
to avoid side effects such as AspectJ dump files and warnings.
This is also a best practice from an efficiency perspective.

The structure and contents of this file is detailed in the LTW part of the
{aspectj-docs-devguide}/ltw-configuration.html[AspectJ reference
documentation]. Because the `aop.xml` file is 100% AspectJ, we do not describe it further here.


[[aop-aj-ltw-libraries]]
=== Required libraries (JARS)

At minimum, you need the following libraries to use the Spring Framework's support
for AspectJ LTW:

* `spring-aop.jar`
* `aspectjweaver.jar`

If you use the xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc#aop-aj-ltw-environments-generic[Spring-provided agent to enable instrumentation]
, you also need:

* `spring-instrument.jar`


[[aop-aj-ltw-spring]]
=== Spring Configuration

The key component in Spring's LTW support is the `LoadTimeWeaver` interface (in the
`org.springframework.instrument.classloading` package), and the numerous implementations
of it that ship with the Spring distribution. A `LoadTimeWeaver` is responsible for
adding one or more `java.lang.instrument.ClassFileTransformers` to a `ClassLoader` at
runtime, which opens the door to all manner of interesting applications, one of which
happens to be the LTW of aspects.

TIP: If you are unfamiliar with the idea of runtime class file transformation, see the
javadoc API documentation for the `java.lang.instrument` package before continuing.
While that documentation is not comprehensive, at least you can see the key interfaces
and classes (for reference as you read through this section).

Configuring a `LoadTimeWeaver` for a particular `ApplicationContext` can be as easy as
adding one line. (Note that you almost certainly need to use an
`ApplicationContext` as your Spring container -- typically, a `BeanFactory` is not
enough because the LTW support uses `BeanFactoryPostProcessors`.)

To enable the Spring Framework's LTW support, you need to configure a `LoadTimeWeaver` as follows:

include-code::./ApplicationConfiguration[tag=snippet,indent=0]

The preceding configuration automatically defines and registers a number of LTW-specific
infrastructure beans, such as a `LoadTimeWeaver` and an `AspectJWeavingEnabler`, for you.
The default `LoadTimeWeaver` is the `DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver` class, which attempts
to decorate an automatically detected `LoadTimeWeaver`. The exact type of `LoadTimeWeaver`
that is "automatically detected" is dependent upon your runtime environment.
The following table summarizes various `LoadTimeWeaver` implementations:

[[aop-aj-ltw-spring-env-impls]]
.DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver LoadTimeWeavers
|===
| Runtime Environment| `LoadTimeWeaver` implementation

| Running in https://tomcat.apache.org/[Apache Tomcat]
| `TomcatLoadTimeWeaver`

| Running in https://eclipse-ee4j.github.io/glassfish/[GlassFish] (limited to EAR deployments)
| `GlassFishLoadTimeWeaver`

| Running in Red Hat's https://www.jboss.org/jbossas/[JBoss AS] or https://www.wildfly.org/[WildFly]
| `JBossLoadTimeWeaver`

| JVM started with Spring `InstrumentationSavingAgent`
  (`java -javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument.jar`)
| `InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver`

| Fallback, expecting the underlying ClassLoader to follow common conventions
  (namely `addTransformer` and optionally a `getThrowawayClassLoader` method)
| `ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver`
|===

Note that the table lists only the `LoadTimeWeavers` that are autodetected when you
use the `DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver`. You can specify exactly which `LoadTimeWeaver`
implementation to use.

To configure a specific `LoadTimeWeaver`, implement the
`LoadTimeWeavingConfigurer` interface and override the `getLoadTimeWeaver()` method
(or use the XML equivalent).
The following example specifies a `ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver`:

include-code::./CustomWeaverConfiguration[tag=snippet,indent=0]

The `LoadTimeWeaver` that is defined and registered by the configuration can be later
retrieved from the Spring container by using the well known name, `loadTimeWeaver`.
Remember that the `LoadTimeWeaver` exists only as a mechanism for Spring's LTW
infrastructure to add one or more `ClassFileTransformers`. The actual
`ClassFileTransformer` that does the LTW is the `ClassPreProcessorAgentAdapter` (from
the `org.aspectj.weaver.loadtime` package) class. See the class-level javadoc of the
`ClassPreProcessorAgentAdapter` class for further details, because the specifics of how
the weaving is actually effected is beyond the scope of this document.

There is one final attribute of the configuration left to discuss: the `aspectjWeaving`
attribute (or `aspectj-weaving` if you use XML). This attribute controls whether LTW
is enabled or not. It accepts one of three possible values, with the default value being
`autodetect` if the attribute is not present. The following table summarizes the three
possible values:

[[aop-aj-ltw-ltw-tag-attrs]]
.AspectJ weaving attribute values
|===
| Annotation Value| XML Value| Explanation

| `ENABLED`
| `on`
| AspectJ weaving is on, and aspects are woven at load-time as appropriate.

| `DISABLED`
| `off`
| LTW is off. No aspect is woven at load-time.

| `AUTODETECT`
| `autodetect`
| If the Spring LTW infrastructure can find at least one `META-INF/aop.xml` file,
  then AspectJ weaving is on. Otherwise, it is off. This is the default value.
|===


[[aop-aj-ltw-environments]]
=== Environment-specific Configuration

This last section contains any additional settings and configuration that you need
when you use Spring's LTW support in environments such as application servers and web
containers.

[[aop-aj-ltw-environments-tomcat-jboss-etc]]
==== Tomcat, JBoss, WildFly

Tomcat and JBoss/WildFly provide a general app `ClassLoader` that is capable of local
instrumentation. Spring's native LTW may leverage those ClassLoader implementations
to provide AspectJ weaving.
You can simply enable load-time weaving, as xref:core/aop/using-aspectj.adoc[described earlier].
Specifically, you do not need to modify the JVM launch script to add
`-javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument.jar`.

Note that on JBoss, you may need to disable the app server scanning to prevent it from
loading the classes before the application actually starts. A quick workaround is to add
to your artifact a file named `WEB-INF/jboss-scanning.xml` with the following content:

[source,xml,indent=0,subs="verbatim"]
----
	<scanning xmlns="urn:jboss:scanning:1.0"/>
----

[[aop-aj-ltw-environments-generic]]
==== Generic Java Applications

When class instrumentation is required in environments that are not supported by
specific `LoadTimeWeaver` implementations, a JVM agent is the general solution.
For such cases, Spring provides `InstrumentationLoadTimeWeaver` which requires a
Spring-specific (but very general) JVM agent, `spring-instrument.jar`, autodetected
by common `@EnableLoadTimeWeaving` and `<context:load-time-weaver/>` setups.

To use it, you must start the virtual machine with the Spring agent by supplying
the following JVM options:

[literal]
[subs="verbatim"]
----
-javaagent:/path/to/spring-instrument.jar
----

Note that this requires modification of the JVM launch script, which may prevent you
from using this in application server environments (depending on your server and your
operation policies). That said, for one-app-per-JVM deployments such as standalone
Spring Boot applications, you typically control the entire JVM setup in any case.




