Spring AOP with CGLIB proxies, matching methods on super-types

[brett_s_r]

Hi,

I've scanned the Spring 2.5.1 and AspectJ docs on this, but I can't find the best solution. It may well be staring me in the face ...

The question is - when using Spring AOP with CGLIB2 proxies, can I declare a pointcut to match all methods called only on a particular concrete class, including methods that are actually declared in that classes' super-types?

Example - I have two concrete classes com.mypackage.MySubClass extends com.mypackage.MyBaseClass, and MyBaseClass declares a method methodInBaseClass(). I want a pointcut on execution of any method in MySubClass, including methodInBaseClass(). I do _not_ want the pointcut to match execution of methodInBaseClass() in MyBaseClass or subclasses other than MySubType.

If I declare:

<aop:pointcut id="anySubClassMethod"
        expression="execution(* com.mypackage.MySubClass.*(..))" />

... I don't seem to generate advice on execution of methodInBaseClass() in MySubClass. Switching to matching MyBaseClass will provide advice on MySubClass#methodInBaseClass(), but also generates unwanted matches in the base class and other subtypes.

I'm guessing that I could achieve this by using @AspectJ notation and combining expressions (any thoughts on the best expression?), but if possible, I'd like to stick with Spring XML AOP configuration.

I realise that this might be a stretch, and that proxying is normally by interfaces, but - is this possible?

Thanks,
Brett

[Mike Bingham]

The following might be a possibility:

<aop:pointcut id="anySubClassMethod"
        expression="execution(* com.mypackage.MyBaseClass+.*(..)) and bean(mysubclassbeanname)" />

Where mysubclassbeanname is the name of a specific bean instance in your application context.

Another possibility, depending on your actual class structure, might be something like:

<aop:pointcut id="anySubClassMethod"
        expression="execution(* com.mypackage.MyBaseClass+.*(..)) and target(com.mypackage.MySubClass)" />

[brett_s_r]

Thank you Mike - these are exactly what I need.

It turns out that upgrading to Spring 2.5.1 was a key for me - I am working within an application which is on 2.0.3.

For the bean() pointcut, 2.5.x is required, and I'm pretty sure that there was a fix for the CGLIB proxy somewhere between 2.0.3 and 2.0.8, as they behave differently when locating pointcuts on super-type classes with CGLIB proxies.

Thanks again - all working now.

Brett