Annotation

Meta annotations

Annotations applied to other annotations

@Target

Marks another annotation to restrict what kind of Java elements the annotation may be applied to. Values of ElementType includes:

• TYPE: class, interface or enum
• FIELD: fields, including the constants in the enum
• METHOD
• PARAMETER
• CONSTRUCTOR
• LOCAL_VARIABLE
• ANNOTATION_TYPE
• PACKAGE

@Retention

Specifies how the marked annotation is stored. Values of RetentionPolicy includes:

• SOURCE: in code only, abandoned once compiled.
• CLASS(default): compiled into the class, abandoned when running
• RUNTIME: available at runtime through reflection

@Documented

Marks another annotation for inclusion in the documentation.

@Inherited

Marks another annotation to be inherited to subclasses of annotated class. Annotations are not inherited to subclasses by default.

Example

@Target(ElementType.FIELD)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Test{

}

References

• java.lang.annotation (Java SE 11 & JDK 11 )