Reading and Writing Custom Annotation

We have already discussed the basics of annotation and Meta Annotation in JAVA.  In this article i will explain how to read and write the custom annotation in JAVA.

To define custom Annotation, keyword interface is used preceded by @. Like interface, it also has the method declaration.
To make topic easy, lets I want to create the annotation CopyRight

package com.G2.Annotations;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;

@Retention(value=RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface CopyRight {
	public String owner();
	public String location();
	public String year();
}

To use this annotation in our class, we should use like:

package com.G2.Annotations;

@CopyRight(location="Mumbai",owner="Jitendra Zaa",year="2011")
public class TestAnnotations {
}

Annotation can also have the default values while declaration.
Example:

package com.G2.Annotations;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;

@Retention(value=RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface CopyRight  {
	public String owner() default "Jitendra Zaa";
	public String location() default "Mumbai";
	public String year() default "2011";
}

Program to read the Annotations:

package com.G2.Annotations;

import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;

@CopyRight(location="Mumbai",owner="Jitendra Zaa",year="2011")
public class TestAnnotations {

	/**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) throws ClassNotFoundException {
		TestAnnotations obj = new TestAnnotations();
		obj.display();
	}

	public void display() throws ClassNotFoundException
	{
		Annotation[] annotations = TestAnnotations.class.getAnnotations();
		System.out.println(annotations.length);
		for(Annotation a : annotations)
		{
			CopyRight r = (CopyRight)a;
			System.out.println("Location Value in Annotation : "+r.location());
			System.out.println("Owner Value in Annotation : "+r.owner());
			System.out.println("Year Value in Annotation : "+r.year());
		}

	}
}

Output:

1
Location Value in Annotation : Mumbai
Owner Value in Annotation : Jitendra Zaa
Year Value in Annotation : 2011