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. Using AspectJ to Dependency Inject Domain Objects with Spring and Other Spring aspects for AspectJ discuss the content of this library and how you can use it. Configuring AspectJ Aspects by Using Spring IoC discusses how to dependency inject AspectJ aspects that are woven using the AspectJ compiler. Finally, Load-time Weaving with AspectJ in the Spring Framework provides an introduction to load-time weaving for Spring applications that use AspectJ.

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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

package com.xyz.domain;

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

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

<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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

package com.xyz.domain;

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

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

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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Configurable(preConstruction = true)
@Configurable(preConstruction = true)

You can find more information about the language semantics of the various pointcut types in AspectJ in this appendix of the 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 Development Environment Guide) or load-time weaving (see 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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

  • Xml

@Configuration
@EnableSpringConfigured
public class ApplicationConfiguration {
}
@Configuration
@EnableSpringConfigured
class ApplicationConfiguration
<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">

	<context:spring-configured />

</beans>

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:

<bean id="myService"
		class="com.xyz.service.MyService"
		depends-on="org.springframework.beans.factory.aspectj.AnnotationBeanConfigurerAspect">

	<!-- ... -->

</bean>
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.

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.

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).

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.

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:

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);
}

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:

<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:

<aop:aspectj-autoproxy>
	<aop:include name="thisBean"/>
	<aop:include name="thatBean"/>
</aop:aspectj-autoproxy>
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.

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 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, 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 sample application based on Spring Framework.

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.

The example presented here uses XML configuration. You can also configure and use @AspectJ with Java configuration. Specifically, you can use the @EnableLoadTimeWeaving annotation as an alternative to <context:load-time-weaver/> (see 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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

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(){}
}
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:

<!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>
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:

<?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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

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();
	}
}
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:

java -javaagent:C:/projects/xyz/lib/spring-instrument.jar com.xyz.Main

The -javaagent is a flag for specifying and enabling 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:

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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

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();
	}
}
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.

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.

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.

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:

<!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>
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 reference documentation. Because the aop.xml file is 100% AspectJ, we do not describe it further here.

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 Spring-provided agent to enable instrumentation , you also need:

  • spring-instrument.jar

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.

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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

  • Xml

@Configuration
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
public class ApplicationConfiguration {
}
@Configuration
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
class ApplicationConfiguration
<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">

	<context:load-time-weaver />

</beans>

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:

Table 1. DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver LoadTimeWeavers
Runtime Environment LoadTimeWeaver implementation

Running in Apache Tomcat

TomcatLoadTimeWeaver

Running in GlassFish (limited to EAR deployments)

GlassFishLoadTimeWeaver

Running in Red Hat’s JBoss AS or 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:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

  • Xml

@Configuration
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
public class CustomWeaverConfiguration implements LoadTimeWeavingConfigurer {

	@Override
	public LoadTimeWeaver getLoadTimeWeaver() {
		return new ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver();
	}
}
@Configuration
@EnableLoadTimeWeaving
class CustomWeaverConfiguration : LoadTimeWeavingConfigurer {

	override fun getLoadTimeWeaver(): LoadTimeWeaver {
		return ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver()
	}
}
<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">

	<context:load-time-weaver
			weaver-class="org.springframework.instrument.classloading.ReflectiveLoadTimeWeaver"/>

</beans>

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:

Table 2. 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.

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.

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 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:

<scanning xmlns="urn:jboss:scanning:1.0"/>

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:

-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.