Using the schema support, an aspect is simply a regular Java object defined as a bean in your Spring application context. The state and behavior is captured in the fields and methods of the object, and the pointcut and advice information is captured in the XML.

An aspect is declared using the <aop:aspect> element, and the backing bean is referenced using the ref attribute:

<aop:config>
  <aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">
    ...
  </aop:aspect>
</aop:config>

<bean id="aBean" class="...">
  ...
</bean>

The bean backing the aspect ("aBean" in this case) can of course be configured and dependency injected just like any other Spring bean.

A named pointcut can be declared inside an <aop:config> element, enabling the pointcut definition to be shared across several aspects and advisors.

A pointcut representing the execution of any business service in the service layer could be defined as follows:

<aop:config>

  <aop:pointcut id="businessService" 
        expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>

</aop:config>

Note that the pointcut expression itself is using the same AspectJ pointcut expression language as described in Section 7.2, “@AspectJ support”. If you are using the schema based declaration style with Java 5, you can refer to named pointcuts defined in types (@Aspects) within the pointcut expression, but this feature is not available on JDK 1.4 and below (it relies on the Java 5 specific AspectJ reflection APIs). On JDK 1.5 therefore, another way of defining the above pointcut would be:

<aop:config>

  <aop:pointcut id="businessService" 
        expression="com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()"/>

</aop:config>

Assuming you have a SystemArchitecture aspect as described in Section 7.2.3.3, “Sharing common pointcut definitions”.

Declaring a pointcut inside an aspect is very similar to declaring a top-level pointcut:

<aop:config>

  <aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">

    <aop:pointcut id="businessService" 
          expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>
          
    ...
    
  </aop:aspect>

</aop:config>

Much the same way in an @AspectJ aspect, pointcuts declared using the schema based definition style may collect join point context. For example, the following pointcut collects the 'this' object as the join point context and passes it to advice:

<aop:config>

  <aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">

    <aop:pointcut id="businessService" 
          expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) &amp;&amp; this(service)"/>
    <aop:before pointcut-ref="businessService" method="monitor"/>
    ...
    
  </aop:aspect>

</aop:config>

The advice must be declared to receive the collected join point context by including parameters of the matching names:

public void monitor(Object service) {
    ...
}

When combining pointcut sub-expressions, '&&' is awkward within an XML document, and so the keywords 'and', 'or' and 'not' can be used in place of '&&', '||' and '!' respectively. For example, the previous pointcut may be better written as:

<aop:config>

  <aop:aspect id="myAspect" ref="aBean">

    <aop:pointcut id="businessService" 
          expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) and this(service)"/>
    <aop:before pointcut-ref="businessService" method="monitor"/>
    ...
    
  </aop:aspect>

</aop:config>

Note that pointcuts defined in this way are referred to by their XML id and cannot be used as named pointcuts to form composite pointcuts. The named pointcut support in the schema based definition style is thus more limited than that offered by the @AspectJ style.

The same five advice kinds are supported as for the @AspectJ style, and they have exactly the same semantics.

<aop:aspect id="beforeExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:before 
      pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation" 
      method="doAccessCheck"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

<aop:aspect id="beforeExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:before 
      pointcut="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.dao.*.*(..))" 
      method="doAccessCheck"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

<aop:aspect id="afterReturningExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:after-returning 
      pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation" 
      method="doAccessCheck"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

<aop:aspect id="afterReturningExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:after-returning 
      pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
      returning="retVal" 
      method="doAccessCheck"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

public void doAccessCheck(Object retVal) {...

<aop:aspect id="afterThrowingExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:after-throwing
      pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation" 
      method="doRecoveryActions"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

<aop:aspect id="afterThrowingExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:after-throwing 
      pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation"
      throwing="dataAccessEx" 
      method="doRecoveryActions"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

public void doRecoveryActions(DataAccessException dataAccessEx) {...

<aop:aspect id="afterFinallyExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:after
      pointcut-ref="dataAccessOperation" 
      method="doReleaseLock"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

<aop:aspect id="aroundExample" ref="aBean">

    <aop:around
      pointcut-ref="businessService" 
      method="doBasicProfiling"/>
          
    ...
    
</aop:aspect>

public Object doBasicProfiling(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
    // start stopwatch
    Object retVal = pjp.proceed();
    // stop stopwatch
    return retVal;
}

<aop:before
  pointcut="com.xyz.lib.Pointcuts.anyPublicMethod() and @annotation(auditable)"
  method="audit"
  arg-names="auditable"/>

package x.y.service;

public interface FooService {

   Foo getFoo(String fooName, int age);
}

public class DefaultFooService implements FooService {

   public Foo getFoo(String name, int age) {
      return new Foo(name, age);
   }
}

package x.y;

import org.aspectj.lang.ProceedingJoinPoint;
import org.springframework.util.StopWatch;

public class SimpleProfiler {

   public Object profile(ProceedingJoinPoint call, String name, int age) throws Throwable {
      StopWatch clock = new StopWatch(
            "Profiling for '" + name + "' and '" + age + "'");
      try {
         clock.start(call.toShortString());
         return call.proceed();
      } finally {
         clock.stop();
         System.out.println(clock.prettyPrint());
      }
   }
}

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
      xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd">

   <!-- this is the object that will be proxied by Spring's AOP infrastructure -->
   <bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

   <!-- this is the actual advice itself -->
   <bean id="profiler" class="x.y.SimpleProfiler"/>

   <aop:config>
      <aop:aspect ref="profiler">

         <aop:pointcut id="theExecutionOfSomeFooServiceMethod"
                    expression="execution(* x.y.service.FooService.getFoo(String,int))
                    and args(name, age)"/>

         <aop:around pointcut-ref="theExecutionOfSomeFooServiceMethod"
                  method="profile"/>

      </aop:aspect>
   </aop:config>

</beans>

import org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanFactory;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;
import x.y.service.FooService;

public final class Boot {

   public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
      BeanFactory ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("x/y/plain.xml");
      FooService foo = (FooService) ctx.getBean("fooService");
      foo.getFoo("Pengo", 12);
   }
}

StopWatch 'Profiling for 'Pengo' and '12'': running time (millis) = 0
-----------------------------------------
ms     %     Task name
-----------------------------------------
00000  ?  execution(getFoo)

Introductions (known as inter-type declarations in AspectJ) enable an aspect to declare that advised objects implement a given interface, and to provide an implementation of that interface on behalf of those objects.

An introduction is made using the aop:declare-parents element inside an aop:aspect This element is used to declare that matching types have a new parent (hence the name). For example, given an interface UsageTracked, and an implementation of that interface DefaultUsageTracked, the following aspect declares that all implementors of service interfaces also implement the UsageTracked interface. (In order to expose statistics via JMX for example.)

<aop:aspect id="usageTrackerAspect" ref="usageTracking">

  <aop:declare-parents
      types-matching="com.xzy.myapp.service.*+"
      implement-interface="com.xyz.myapp.service.tracking.UsageTracked"
      default-impl="com.xyz.myapp.service.tracking.DefaultUsageTracked"/>
  
  <aop:before
    pointcut="com.xyz.myapp.SystemArchitecture.businessService()
              and this(usageTracked)"
    method="recordUsage"/>
  
</aop:aspect>

The class backing the usageTracking bean would contain the method:

public void recordUsage(UsageTracked usageTracked) {
    usageTracked.incrementUseCount();
}

The interface to be implemented is determined by implement-interface attribute. The value of the types-matching attribute is an AspectJ type pattern :- any bean of a matching type will implement the UsageTracked interface. Note that in the before advice of the above example, service beans can be directly used as implementations of the UsageTracked interface. If accessing a bean programmatically you would write the following:

UsageTracked usageTracked = (UsageTracked) context.getBean("myService");

The only supported instantiation model for schema-defined aspects is the singleton model. Other instantiation models may be supported in future releases.

The concept of "advisors" is brought forward from the AOP support defined in Spring 1.2 and does not have a direct equivalent in AspectJ. An advisor is like a small self-contained aspect that has a single piece of advice. The advice itself is represented by a bean, and must implement one of the advice interfaces described in Section 8.3.2, “Advice types in Spring”. Advisors can take advantage of AspectJ pointcut expressions though.

Spring 2.0 supports the advisor concept with the <aop:advisor> element. You will most commonly see it used in conjunction with transactional advice, which also has its own namespace support in Spring 2.0. Here's how it looks:

<aop:config>

  <aop:pointcut id="businessService"
        expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>

  <aop:advisor 
      pointcut-ref="businessService"
      advice-ref="tx-advice"/>
      
</aop:config>

<tx:advice id="tx-advice">
  <tx:attributes>
    <tx:method name="*" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
  </tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

Let's see how the concurrent locking failure retry example from Section 7.2.7, “Example” looks when rewritten using the schema support.

The execution of business services can sometimes fail due to concurrency issues (for example, deadlock loser). If the operation is retried, it is quite likely it will succeed next time round. For business services where it is appropriate to retry in such conditions (idempotent operations that don't need to go back to the user for conflict resolution), we'd like to transparently retry the operation to avoid the client seeing a PessimisticLockingFailureException. This is a requirement that clearly cuts across multiple services in the service layer, and hence is ideal for implementing via an aspect.

Because we want to retry the operation, we'll need to use around advice so that we can call proceed multiple times. Here's how the basic aspect implementation looks (it's just a regular Java class using the schema support):

public class ConcurrentOperationExecutor implements Ordered {
   
   private static final int DEFAULT_MAX_RETRIES = 2;

   private int maxRetries = DEFAULT_MAX_RETRIES;
   private int order = 1;

   public void setMaxRetries(int maxRetries) {
      this.maxRetries = maxRetries;
   }
   
   public int getOrder() {
      return this.order;
   }
   
   public void setOrder(int order) {
      this.order = order;
   }
   
   public Object doConcurrentOperation(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable { 
      int numAttempts = 0;
      PessimisticLockingFailureException lockFailureException;
      do {
         numAttempts++;
         try { 
            return pjp.proceed();
         }
         catch(PessimisticLockingFailureException ex) {
            lockFailureException = ex;
         }
      }
      while(numAttempts <= this.maxRetries);
      throw lockFailureException;
   }

}

Note that the aspect implements the Ordered interface so we can set the precedence of the aspect higher than the transaction advice (we want a fresh transaction each time we retry). The maxRetries and order properties will both be configured by Spring. The main action happens in the doConcurrentOperation around advice method. We try to proceed, and if we fail with a PessimisticLockingFailureException we simply try again unless we have exhausted all of our retry attempts.

This class is identical to the one used in the @AspectJ example, but with the annotations removed.

The corresponding Spring configuration is:

<aop:config>

  <aop:aspect id="concurrentOperationRetry" ref="concurrentOperationExecutor">

    <aop:pointcut id="idempotentOperation"
        expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..))"/>
       
    <aop:around
       pointcut-ref="idempotentOperation"
       method="doConcurrentOperation"/>
  
  </aop:aspect>

</aop:config>

<bean id="concurrentOperationExecutor"
  class="com.xyz.myapp.service.impl.ConcurrentOperationExecutor">
     <property name="maxRetries" value="3"/>
     <property name="order" value="100"/>  
</bean>

Notice that for the time being we assume that all business services are idempotent. If this is not the case we can refine the aspect so that it only retries genuinely idempotent operations, by introducing an Idempotent annotation:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Idempotent {
  // marker annotation
}

and using the annotation to annotate the implementation of service operations. The change to the aspect to retry only idempotent operations simply involves refining the pointcut expression so that only @Idempotent operations match:

  <aop:pointcut id="idempotentOperation"
        expression="execution(* com.xyz.myapp.service.*.*(..)) and
                    @annotation(com.xyz.myapp.service.Idempotent)"/>