Software Architect's Handbook

Runtime weaving

Runtime weaving does not take place until after the application starts executing. The advice for an aspect and the code that it will be applied to are both instantiated at runtime. Unlike the compile-time weaving approach, no post-compilation changes are made to binaries.

The way that runtime weaving works is similar to the decorator pattern that was described in the Using the decorator pattern section that appeared earlier in this chapter. The main difference is the fact that an AOP tool can generate the decorator classes at runtime without requiring developers to manually create them beforehand. The AOP tool generates a proxy object dynamically, which implements the same interface as the target object and can delegate to ...