Annotations

Annotations

Annotations, a form of metadata, provide data about a program that is not part of the program itself. Annotations have no direct effect on the operation of the code they annotate.

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Annotations have a number of uses, among them:

• Information for the compiler — Annotations can be used by the compiler to detect errors or suppress warnings.
• Compile-time and deployment-time processing — Software tools can process annotation information to generate code, XML files, and so forth
• Runtime processing — Some annotations are available to be examined at runtime.

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Annotations Basics

• The Format of an Annotation

  • In its simplest form, an annotation looks like the following:

     @Entity
    

  • Repeating annotations are supported as of the Java SE 8 release

    @Author(name = "Jane Doe")
    @Author(name = "John Smith")
    class MyClass { ... }
    

• Where Annotations Can Be Used
  Annotations can be applied to declarations: declarations of classes, fields, methods, and other program elements. When used on a declaration, each annotation often appears, by convention, on its own line.