Mastering Spring AOP Pointcuts: Static, Dynamic, and Custom Implementations

1 Static Pointcut

Static pointcuts are based on the method and target class and cannot consider method arguments. They are evaluated only once when the method is first called.

Regular‑expression pointcut (JdkRegexpMethodPointcut) matches methods whose signatures fit any of the provided patterns.

<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulatePointcut" class="org.springframework.aop.support.JdkRegexpMethodPointcut">
  <property name="patterns">
    <list>
      <value>.*set.*</value>
      <value>.*absquatulate</value>
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>

RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor combines a pointcut and an advice.

<bean id="settersAndAbsquatulateAdvisor" class="org.springframework.aop.support.RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor">
  <property name="advice">
    <ref bean="beanNameOfAopAllianceInterceptor"/>
  </property>
  <property name="patterns">
    <list>
      <value>.*set.*</value>
      <value>.*absquatulate</value>
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>

2 Dynamic Pointcut

Dynamic pointcuts evaluate on each method call because they consider method arguments; they cannot be cached. The main example is the control‑flow pointcut, implemented by org.springframework.aop.support.ControlFlowPointcut.

public class ControlFlowPointcut implements Pointcut, ClassFilter, MethodMatcher {
  private final Class<?> clazz;
  private final String methodName;
  @Override
  public boolean matches(Class<?> clazz) { return true; }
  @Override
  public boolean matches(Method method, Class<?> targetClass) { return true; }
  @Override
  public boolean isRuntime() { return true; }
  @Override
  public boolean matches(Method method, Class<?> targetClass, Object... args) {
    for (StackTraceElement element : new Throwable().getStackTrace()) {
      if (element.getClassName().equals(this.clazz.getName()) &&
          (this.methodName == null || element.getMethodName().equals(this.methodName))) {
        return true;
      }
    }
    return false;
  }
}

Example usage prints the method names from the current stack trace.

public class StackElementMain {
  public static void m1() { m2(); }
  public static void m2() {
    StackTraceElement[] elements = new RuntimeException().getStackTrace();
    for (StackTraceElement element : elements) {
      System.out.println(element.getMethodName());
    }
  }
  public static void main(String[] args) { m1(); }
}

3 Pointcut Superclass

Spring provides abstract pointcut super‑classes such as StaticMethodMatcherPointcut for creating custom pointcuts. Subclass it and implement the abstract matches method.

class TestStaticPointcut extends StaticMethodMatcherPointcut {
  @Override
  public boolean matches(Method m, Class targetClass) {
    // return true if custom criteria match
  }
}

Custom pointcuts can be arbitrarily complex, but using AspectJ pointcut expressions is recommended when possible.