Aspect Oriented Programming with Spring
Aspect-oriented Programming (AOP) complements Object-oriented Programming (OOP) by providing another way of thinking about program structure. The key unit of modularity in OOP is the class, whereas in AOP the unit of modularity is the aspect. Aspects enable the modularization of concerns (such as transaction management) that cut across multiple types and objects. (Such concerns are often termed “crosscutting” concerns in AOP literature.)
One of the key components of Spring is the AOP framework. While the Spring IoC container does not depend on AOP (meaning you do not need to use AOP if you don’t want to), AOP complements Spring IoC to provide a very capable middleware solution.
Concept
- Aspect: A modularization of a concern that cuts across multiple classes. Transaction management is a good example of a crosscutting concern in enterprise Java applications. In Spring AOP, aspects are implemented by using regular classes (the schema-based approach) or regular classes annotated with the @Aspect annotation (the @AspectJ style).
- Join point: A point during the execution of a program, such as the execution of a method or the handling of an exception. In Spring AOP, a join point always represents a method execution.
- AOP proxy: An object created by the AOP framework in order to implement the aspect contracts (advise method executions and so on). In the Spring Framework, an AOP proxy is a JDK dynamic proxy or a CGLIB proxy.
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In my word, AOP could let us add new feature to our code but no need to change source code. Because the new feature code should be a new "module", and we could use this "module" into our source code to help us implement new feature.