The annotations can be retrieved back at the runtime. They are usually retrieved by tools, such as the data-binding manager, rather than applications. In other words, applications annotate a ZUML page to tell the tools how to handle components for a particular purpose.

The following is an example to dump all annotations of a component:

void dump(StringBuffer sb, Component comp) {
ComponentCtrl compCtrl = (ComponentCtrl)comp;
    sb.append(comp.getId()).append(": ")    
     .append(compCtrl .getAnnotations()).append('\n');    

    for (Iterator it = compCtrl.getAnnotatedProperties().iterator(); it.hasNext();) {    
        String prop = it.next();        
        sb.append(" with ").append(prop).append(": ")        
            .append(compCtrl .getAnnotations(prop)).append('\n');            
    }    
}