public Interface MergedAnnotations

Each merged annotation represents a view where the attribute values may be "merged" from different source values, typically:

• Explicit and Implicit @AliasFor declarations on one or more attributes within the annotation
• Explicit @AliasFor declarations for a meta-annotation
• Convention based attribute aliases for a meta-annotation
• From a meta-annotation declaration

For example, a @PostMapping annotation might be defined as follows:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
public @interface PostMapping {

    @AliasFor(attribute = "path")
    String[] value() default {};

    @AliasFor(attribute = "value")
    String[] path() default {};
}

If a method is annotated with @PostMapping("/home") it will contain merged annotations for both @PostMapping and the meta-annotation @RequestMapping. The merged view of the @RequestMapping annotation will contain the following attributes:

MergedAnnotations can be obtained from any Java AnnotatedElement. They may also be used for sources that don't use reflection (such as those that directly parse bytecode).

Different search strategies can be used to locate related source elements that contain the annotations to be aggregated. For example, the following code uses SearchStrategy#TYPE_HIERARCHY to search for annotations on MyClass as well as in superclasses and implemented interfaces.

MergedAnnotations mergedAnnotations =
    MergedAnnotations.search(TYPE_HIERARCHY).from(MyClass.class);

From a MergedAnnotations instance you can either get a single annotation, or stream all annotations or just those that match a specific type. You can also quickly tell if an annotation is present.

Here are some typical examples:

// is an annotation present or meta-present?
mergedAnnotations.isPresent(ExampleAnnotation.class);

// get the merged "value" attribute of ExampleAnnotation (either directly or
// meta-present)
mergedAnnotations.get(ExampleAnnotation.class).getString("value");

// get all meta-annotations but no directly present annotations
mergedAnnotations.stream().filter(MergedAnnotation::isMetaPresent);

// get all ExampleAnnotation declarations (including any meta-annotations) and
// print the merged "value" attributes
mergedAnnotations.stream(ExampleAnnotation.class)
    .map(mergedAnnotation -> mergedAnnotation.getString("value"))
    .forEach(System.out::println);

NOTE: The MergedAnnotations API and its underlying model have been designed for composable annotations in Spring's common component model, with a focus on attribute aliasing and meta-annotation relationships. There is no support for retrieving plain Java annotations with this API; please use standard Java reflection or Spring's AnnotationUtils for simple annotation retrieval purposes.