Description Ramnivas Laddad 2008-07-08 11:43:18 EDT

A well-known AspectJ idiom calls for creating an intermediate type (usually an interface), using declare parents to make it a super type of a set of type, and introducing members to it.

aspect EntityManagement {
    private static interface IEntity {
    }

    declare parents: com.myco.domain.* implements IEntity;

    private long IEntity.lastAccessedTime;

    ... advice to IEntity+ ...
}

This idiom may be simplified if the declare parents declaration were to allow something like:

declare parents: <TypePattern> <implements|extends]> <Type> [{ [TypeBody] } ];

This declaration defines the parent type and makes it a super type for the matching types in one statement. Then the aspect will simplify to the following:

aspect EntityManagement {
    declare parents: com.myco.domain.* implements IEntity { };

    private long IEntity.lastAccessedTime;

    ... advice to IEntity+ ...
}

This feature also offers a simpler way to implement the "typedef" feature and may help in reducing the number of parentheses when creating annotation-based pointcuts.