Package org.aopalliance.reflect

This package provides a set of interfaces for implementing a generic reflection API.

See:
Description

Interface Summary

Class	This element represents classes in the base program.
ClassLocator	This interface represents a specific unit locator for base program classes.
Code	This represents a piece of code in the program.
CodeLocator	This interface represents a locator on a base program piece of code.
Field	This represents a field of a class.
Locator	This interface represents a locator on the base program.
Member	This interface represents a class member.
Metadata	A metadata is a pair of values (key,data) that can be associated to a program unit.
Method	This represents a method of a class.
ProgramUnit	An abstract program unit.
UnitLocator	This interface represents a locator on a base program structural unit.

Package org.aopalliance.reflect Description

This package provides a set of interfaces for implementing a generic reflection API.

The motivations of this package are to have a generic reflection API with interfaces so that any AO system provider can implement its own base program introspection package. In general, we cannot use java.lang.reflect since in most of the AOP systems, this representation is not available (e.g. in load-time systems or compile-time systems).

The implementor can implement this API for compile-time purpose (for instance based on a source-code analysis implementation), for a load-time purpose (mostly based on a bytecode-level implementation), or for a run-time purpose.

This package has be rougthly specified and really needs further investigations.