Wildcard support on package name in Spring AOP pointcut expression

Question

I'm trying to implement a logger aspect that can be applied across multiple packages in my application. It is a big spring web application having many modules. Each module has it's own controllers, services and DAOs. The pointcuts I define targets all the public methods on each classes within the packages. It's public * com.abc.module1.controllers.*.*(..) for the controllers, public * com.abc.module1.services.*.*(..) for the services and public * com.abc.module1.daos.*.*(..) for the DAOs in module1. I've around 30 such modules. So the problem is, to cover all these modules I have to define pointcuts for each of them. All the modules follow the same package structure. Is there a way I can specify the the pointcut that can cover all controllers, services that are placed in different modules? Does spring AOP allows wild cards in package names?

kriegaex kriegaex · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-18T00:41:23

I do recommend reading the AspectJ documentation, e.g.

Then you would not need to ask a question like this here.

Anyway, here is how you solve your problem (I am adding line breaks for better readability):

execution(public * com.abc..controllers..*(..)) ||
execution(public * com.abc..services..*(..)) ||
execution(public * com.abc..daos..*(..))

Or alternatively:

(
  within(com.abc..controllers..*) ||
  within(com.abc..services..*) ||
  within(com.abc..daos..*)
) &&
execution(public * *(..))

If you use Spring AOP instead of full-fledged AspectJ you can make it even simpler because Spring AOP basically only knows execution() and no other pointcuts like call(), constructor execution, set() / get() etc.

within(com.abc..controllers..*) ||
within(com.abc..services..*) ||
within(com.abc..daos..*)

With JDK dynamic proxies (default when your components implement interfaces) this would only target public method calls anyway. With CGLIB proxies it would also target protected and package-private ones. BTW, you also need to upgrade your simple pointcut to one of the above, more explicit ones, if you ever migrate from Spring AOP to AspectJ later.

Wildcard support on package name in Spring AOP pointcut expression

1 Answers