Core Java™ 2 Volume II - Advanced Features, Seventh Edition

Annotation Syntax

In this section, we cover everything you need to know about the annotation syntax.

An annotation is defined by an annotation interface:

modifiers @interface AnnotationName{   element declaration₁   element declaration₂   . . .}

Each element declaration has the form

type elementName();

or

type elementName() default value;

For example, the following annotation has two elements, assignedTo and severity.

public @interface BugReport
{
   String assignedTo() default "[none]";
   int severity() = 0;
}

Each annotation has the format

@AnnotationName(elementName₁=value₁, elementName₂=value₂, . . .)

For example,

@BugReport(assignedTo="Harry", severity=10)

The order of the elements does not matter. The annotation

 @BugReport(severity=10, ...