AOP concepts explained for the dummy

Question

I'm learning Aspect Oriented Programming and have isues understanding concepts. I'm not a bad programmer but my english is bad and can't understand fully the definitions.

Can someone explain AOP concepts for dummies: join point, pointcut, weaving etc.

For example: Aspect: a modularization of a concern that cuts across multiple classes. What that means?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Think of a concern as a functionality group e.g. logging, auditing, security

These functionalities are ever present in most code, but they don't really live in our animal->dog classes - they are functionality that should live in many classes - they are cross cutting concerns.

• A Joinpoint is a place in the code where the aspect code is actually ran.

• A pointcut is how to say what code runs at the jointpoint.

• Weaving - is when the compiler/system takes your normal code and includes all the AOP code so that it triggers the correct code etc - can think of this as an extra pre-compile step.

A simple understandable example is:

1. We want to track all method calls for debugging purposes (i.e. We want to see which methods get called in what order).
2. We create an aspect that logs the name of the method when it gets called
3. We create pointcuts that associate the aspect with all methods in the code. In most AOP frameworks you can do this easily with some wild cards
4. We now have logging of every method ever called.

Please be aware that terminology differs slightly between different implementations and AOP frameworks.