Enum RetentionPolicy

[Dave Wagner]

Can somebody explain the real-life need for @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME) is? I looked at the javadoc which explains what it does but not why I will ever need it.

Thanks

[Steve Luke]

The RetentionPolicy pertains to Annotations, which provides a sort of meta-data about your code. To learn more about Annotations read The Annotations Tutorial.

[Rob Spoor]

With @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME), the annotation is preserved during runtime, and can be retrieved using reflection. You could use this for instance for testing purposes. Suppose you have an annotation called @Test that indicates a method is a test method. Then you could write an automatic testing tool:

// give a class c
Method[] methods = c.getMethods();
for (Method method: methods)
{
    boolean test = method.getAnnotation(Test.class) != null;
    if (test)
    {
        // it is a test method, invoke it
    }
}

[Ulf Dittmer]

Quite a few libraries now work by looking at annotations - JUnit 4 (which is somewhat like what Rob mentions), but also APIs like JAX-WS and JAX-RS, and frameworks like Stripes. It cuts down on the number of config files that were traditionally used to keep this kind of information.

RetentionPolicy.SOUCE is useful for tools handling just the source code (like the javac compiler); @Override is an example of that.

What I don't understand is why RetentionPolicy.CLASS is the default; it seems less useful than the other two options.