AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation() should look for annotations on annotations [SPR-5085]

[spring-projects-issues]

Bruno Navert opened SPR-5085 and commented

When searching for annotations using AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation(), it should be possible to detect annotations that are present on other annotations.

For instance, imagine a controller class annotated with @MyController, where @MyController is a custom annotation that I created. @MyController is itself annotated with @Controller (it is a specialization of controller). It would be nice if the call AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation(handlerType, Controller.class) could, in addition to searching interfaces and super-classes, also look at the annotations (MyController) and look for the requested @Controller annotation there.

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Affects: 2.5.4

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

Thanks for the suggestion! As of 3.0 M3, custom stereotype annotations can be meta-annotated with specialized stereotypes such as @Service, @Controller etc as well, with the same runtime effect as when using @Service, @Controller etc directly.

Juergen