Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC with JavaConfig?

Question

According to Spring's Documentation Configuring AspectJ aspects using Spring IoC in order to configure an aspect for Spring IOC, the following has to be added to the xml configuration:

<bean id="profiler" class="com.xyz.profiler.Profiler"
      factory-method="aspectOf">
  <property name="profilingStrategy" ref="jamonProfilingStrategy"/>
</bean>

As suggested by @SotiriosDelimanolis, rewriting this as the following in JavaConfig should to work:

@Bean
public com.xyz.profiler.Profiler profiler() {
    com.xyz.profiler.Profiler profiler = com.xyz.profiler.Profiler.aspectOf();
    profiler.setProfilingStrategy(jamonProfilingStrategy()); // assuming you have a corresponding @Bean method for that bean
    return profiler;
}

However, this only seems to work if the Profiler aspect is written in native aspectj .aj syntax. If it is written in Java and annotated with @Aspect, I get the following error message:

The method aspectOf() is undefined for the type Profiler

Is there an equivalent way of writing this using JavaConfig for aspects written with @AspectJ syntax?

Answer 1

Turns out that there is an org.aspectj.lang.Aspects class to provide for specifically this purpose. It appears that the aspectOf() method is added by the LTW which is why it works fine in XML configuration, but not at compile time.

To get around this limitation, org.aspectj.lang.Aspects provides a aspectOf() method:

@Bean
public com.xyz.profiler.Profiler profiler() {
    com.xyz.profiler.Profiler profiler = Aspects.aspectOf(com.xyz.profiler.Profiler.class);
    profiler.setProfilingStrategy(jamonProfilingStrategy()); // assuming you have a corresponding @Bean method for that bean
    return profiler;
}

Hope this helps someone else in the future.

Answer 2

Is there an equivalent way of writing this using JavaConfig?

Almost always.

@Bean
public com.xyz.profiler.Profiler profiler() {
    com.xyz.profiler.Profiler profiler = com.xyz.profiler.Profiler.aspectOf();
    profiler.setProfilingStrategy(jamonProfilingStrategy()); // assuming you have a corresponding @Bean method for that bean
    return profiler;
}

The factory-method is explained in the documentation in Instantiation with a static factory method.