Re: 1.5 and japitools

[Stuart Ballard]

(hope you don't mind my replying to this on the list)

Jeroen Frijters wrote:
> One thing that's missing is the fact that annotations can have default
> values:
> import java.lang.annotation.*;
>
> public @interface MyAnnotation
> {
>   String value() default "foo";
>   Thread.State state() default Thread.State.RUNNABLE;
>   Retention ret() default @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME);
>   Class clazz() default String.class;
>   int[] list() default { 1, 2, 3 };
> }

Interesting syntax...

Is an @interface limited to methods that return non-void types and have 
no arguments? Can they throw exceptions? Can an @interface extend other 
interfaces or @interfaces?

> These default values need to be encoded too (since they appear in the
> documentation). The supported types are primitive types, String, Class,
> enum types, annotation types, and arrays of the preceding types.

The existing syntax for primitive constants seems like it's appropriate 
here...

mypackage,MyAnnotation! Pasnu annotation
mypackage,MyAnnotation!value() Painu Ljava/lang/String;:foo
mypackage,MyAnnotation!state() Painu Ljava/lang/Thread$State;:RUNNABLE
mypackage,MyAnnotation!clazz() Painu Ljava/lang/Class;:Ljava/lang/String;
(note the use of Type Signature representation here because that's 
needed to distinguish between Integer.class and Integer.TYPE)

Not sure how to represent ret() yet because I don't understand 
annotations well enough.

mypackage,MyAnnotation!list() Painu [I:1,2,3

For array-of-string types, any commas in the strings themselves would be 
backslash-escaped. For two-dimensional arrays of strings we could double 
up the escaping, etc.

Thoughts?

Stuart.




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Stuart Ballard, Senior Web Developer
NetReach, Inc.
(215) 283-2300, ext. 126
http://www.netreach.com/