AOP : Examples of Common Pointcut Expressions

Some examples of common pointcut expressions in Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) are given below.

• the execution of any public method:

  execution(public * *(..))

• the execution of any method with a name beginning with "set":

  execution(* set*(..))

• the execution of any method defined by the AccountService interface:

  execution(* com.xyz.service.AccountService.*(..))

• the execution of any method defined in the service package:

  execution(* com.xyz.service.*.*(..))

• the execution of any method defined in the service package or a sub-package:

  execution(* com.xyz.service..*.*(..))

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) within the service package:

  within(com.xyz.service.*)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) within the service package or a sub-package:

  within(com.xyz.service..*)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the proxy implements the AccountService interface:

  this(com.xyz.service.AccountService)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the target object implements the
AccountService interface:

  target(com.xyz.service.AccountService)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) which takes a single parameter, and where the argument passed at runtime is Serializable:

  args(java.io.Serializable)

Note that the pointcut given in this example is different to execution(* *(java.io.Serializable)): the args version matches if the argument passed at runtime is Serializable, the execution version matches if the method signature declares a single parameter of type Serializable.


• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the target object has an @Transactional annotation:

  @target(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the declared type of the target object has an @Transactional annotation:

  @within(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) where the executing method has an @Transactional

  @annotation(org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) which takes a single parameter, and where the runtime type of the argument passed has the @Classified annotation:

  @args(com.xyz.security.Classified)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) on a Spring bean named 'tradeService':

  bean(tradeService)

• any join point (method execution only in Spring AOP) on Spring beans having names that match the wildcard expression '*Service':

 bean(*Service)