Spring AOP

One of the key components of Spring Framework is the Aspect oriented programming (AOP) framework. Aspect-Oriented Programming entails breaking down program logic into distinct parts called so-called concerns. The functions that span multiple points of an application are called cross-cutting concerns and these cross-cutting concerns are conceptually separate from the application's business logic. There are various common good examples of aspects like logging, auditing, declarative transactions, security, caching, etc.

The key unit of modularity in OOP is the class, whereas in AOP the unit of modularity is the aspect. Dependency Injection helps you decouple your application objects from each other and AOP helps you decouple cross-cutting concerns from the objects that they affect. AOP is like triggers in programming languages such as Perl, .NET, Java, and others.

Spring AOP module provides interceptors to intercept an application. For example, when a method is executed, you can add extra functionality before or after the method execution.

AOP Terminologies

Before we start working with AOP, let us become familiar with the AOP concepts and terminology. These terms are not specific to Spring, rather they are related to AOP.

• Aspect:This is a module which has a set of APIs providing cross-cutting requirements. For example, a logging module would be called AOP aspect for logging. An application can have any number of aspects depending on the requirement.
• Join point:This represents a point in your application where you can plug-in the AOP aspect. You can also say, it is the actual place in the application where an action will be taken using Spring AOP framework.
• Advice:This is the actual action to be taken either before or after the method execution. This is an actual piece of code that is invoked during the program execution by Spring AOP framework.
  • before : Run advice before the a method execution.
  • after: Run advice after the method execution, regardless of its outcome.
  • after-returning: Run advice after the a method execution only if method completes successfully.
  • after-throwing: Run advice after the a method execution only if method exits by throwing an exception.
  • around:Run advice before and after the advised method is invoked.

• Pointcut:This is a set of one or more join points where an advice should be executed. You can specify pointcuts using expressions or patterns.
• Introduction:An introduction allows you to add new methods or attributes to the existing classes.
• Target object:The object being advised by one or more aspects. This object will always be a proxied object, also referred to as the advised object.
• Weaving:Weaving is the process of linking aspects with other application types or objects to create an advised object. This can be done at compile time, load time, or at runtime.

Types of Advice

• before : Run advice before the a method execution.
• after: Run advice after the method execution, regardless of its outcome.
• after-returning: Run advice after the a method execution only if method completes successfully.
• after-throwing: Run advice after the a method execution only if method exits by throwing an exception.
• around:Run advice before and after the advised method is invoked.

Custom Aspects Implementation

Spring supports the @AspectJ annotation style approach and the schema-based approach to implement custom aspects. These two approaches have been explained in detail in the following sections.

• XML Schema based : https://www.tutorialspoint.com/spring/schema_based_aop_appoach.htm
  • Aspects are implemented using the regular classes along with XML based configuration.

• @AspectJ based : https://www.tutorialspoint.com/spring/aspectj_based_aop_appoach.htm
  • @AspectJ refers to a style of declaring aspects as regular Java classes annotated with Java 5 annotations. The @AspectJ support is enabled by including the following element inside your XML Schema-based configuration file.

Spring AOP Interview Questions

What is Spring AOP? What is its use

Suppose we want to log every method entry and exit. This can be achieved by writing log statements in every method at the start and end. But this will require lot of code work. There are various such tasks like Security which need to be applied across all methods or classes. These are known as cross cutting concerns. AOP addresses the problem of cross-cutting concerns, which would be any kind of code that is repeated in different methods and cannot normally be completely refactored into its own module, like with logging or verification.

What are the different implementations of Spring AOP ?

The different implementations of Spring AOP are-

• AspectJ
• Spring AOP
• JBoss AOP

Define Run-time AOP vs Compile-time AOP ?

The different types of AOPs depending on when they are loaded are-

• Source code weaving: Aspect code is injected as source code statements into your application source code. This is some kind of preprocessor approach. No AOP framework in the Java world uses this approach nowadays, but there used to be some in the early days of AOP.
• Compile-time weaving: Aspect code is woven into your application by a special compiler.
• Binary weaving: Aspect code is woven into existing class files after compilation rather than during compilation.
• Load-time weaving (LTW): A weaving agent/library is loaded early when your VM/container is started. It gets a configuration file with rules describing which aspects should be woven into which classes.
• Proxy-based LTW: This special LTW form is used by Spring AOP while AspectJ does the previous 3 forms listed above. It works by creating dynamic proxies (i.e. subclasses or interface implementations) for aspect targets.