How to determine the class is AnnotationDeclaration or TypeDeclaration using JDT

Question

I am using JDT ASTParser to parse all Java file in given folder. I wrote the follow code:

private void parse(String fileContent) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    //advise the parser to parse the code following to the Java Language Specification, Third Edition.
    ASTParser parser = ASTParser.newParser(AST.JLS3); 
    // tell the parser, that it has to expect an ICompilationUnit (a pointer to a Java file) as input.
    parser.setKind(ASTParser.K_COMPILATION_UNIT);       
    parser.setSource(fileContent.toCharArray());
    parser.setResolveBindings(true);
    final CompilationUnit cu = (CompilationUnit) parser.createAST(null);

    cu.accept(new ASTVisitor() {
        public boolean visit(AnnotationTypeDeclaration node) {

            System.out.println("Annotaion: " + node.getName());

            return true;
        }

        public boolean visit(TypeDeclaration node) {

            System.out.println("Type: " + node.getName());

            return true;
        }
    });     

}

The thing is that, there are 2 kind of Java classes:

• Bound2Processor.java is a normal java class: TypeDeclaration

  package com.richardle;
  
  import ...;
  
  
  public class Bound2Processor extends AbstractAnnotationProcessor<Bound, CtMethod<?>> {
     ...
  }
  

• Bound.java is annotation declaration class: AnnotationTypeDeclaration

      package com.richardle;    
      public @interface Bound {
          double min(); 
      }
  

  But when running the code, I got the output:

  File: D:\SOFTWARE\Android\SpoonTest\src\com\richardle\Bound.java // no thing print here
  File: D:\SOFTWARE\Android\SpoonTest\src\com\richardle\Bound2Processor.java
  Type: Bound2Processor
  

The problem is that the name of annotation class was not printed. Maybe ASTParser not call the function public boolean visit(AnnotationTypeDeclaration node). Could you please tell me why ASTParser ignore this function? And how can determine a class is a normal class or annotation declaration ?

Answer 1

Annotations will only be parsed by the ASTParser, if the Java compliance is set to be greater than 1.5.

From the ASTParser Javadoc:

In order to parse 1.5 code, some compiler options need to be set to 1.5

So you need to add the following lines to your code:

Map options = JavaCore.getOptions();
JavaCore.setComplianceOptions(JavaCore.VERSION_1_5, options);
parser.setCompilerOptions(options);

EDIT

Here is the complete parse method I used for testing:

public static void parse(String fileContent) {
    //advise the parser to parse the code following to the Java Language Specification, Third Edition.
    ASTParser parser = ASTParser.newParser(AST.JLS3); 
    Map options = JavaCore.getOptions();
    JavaCore.setComplianceOptions(JavaCore.VERSION_1_5, options);
    parser.setCompilerOptions(options);

    // tell the parser, that it has to expect an ICompilationUnit (a pointer to a Java file) as input.
    parser.setKind(ASTParser.K_COMPILATION_UNIT);       
    parser.setSource(fileContent.toCharArray());
    parser.setResolveBindings(true);
    final CompilationUnit cu = (CompilationUnit) parser.createAST(null);

    cu.accept(new ASTVisitor() {
        public boolean visit(AnnotationTypeDeclaration node) {
            System.out.println("Annotaion: " + node.getName());
            return true;
        }

        public boolean visit(TypeDeclaration node) {
            System.out.println("Type: " + node.getName());
            return true;
        }
    });
}

And here are the very simple classes I provided as input to parse(String):

public @interface Bound {
    double min(); 
}

public class Bound2Processor {

}

This is the Output:

Annotaion: Bound
Type: Bound2Processor