Re: Method Name extraction

From:

=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:52:31 -0400

Message-ID:

<4aa831ae$0$280$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>

Wojtek wrote:

Daniel Pitts wrote :

Wojtek wrote:

Alessio Stalla wrote :

On Sep 9, 5:18 pm, Wojtek <nowh...@a.com> wrote:

This has probably been hashed to death, however,

It these a way to extract the name of the method from within that
method?

public String getFoo()
{
  Log.trace(this.class.GetName(), "getFoo", "I am in the method");
  return "Foo";

}

public String getFooBar()
{
  Log.trace(this.class.GetName(), "getFooBar", "I am in the method");
  return getFoo() + "Bar";

}

If you are using this for logging, chances are that your log
implementation already does what you want, and you just have to tell
it to print the method name. Log4j for example supports this.

Else, you can inspect the return value of Thread.currentThread
().getStackTrace(). You can study the log4j source code to see how
they do it.

Yes, but that takes runtime cycles which I am loathe to waste on
logging. Besides the method name is also used in other places such as:

sql.commit("methodName");

I know I can set up a:
final String methodName="Foo";

but again that is runtime expense and also means that if I refactor
the method name, then I also need to change the text.

Something cheap, preferrably done by the compiler as a compiler
directive, rather than a runtime action.

You can use AOP and either instrument your code at class-load time or
at compile-time. Look for different AoP implementations, you might
find one you want.

Hmmm, from Wikipedia: "if a programmer makes a logical mistake in
expressing crosscutting, it can lead to widespread program failure"

A little to fragile for me,

Not that much different from other code.

Software bugs can cause software failure. That is how it is.

AOP can make it a bit tricky to track down what exactly is going on,
but if you limit your AOP usage, then it is manageable.

moreover I would need to refactor the entire
code base (160,000+ lines right now).

I was hoping for an annotation or something already existing that is
mostly benign

No matter what technique you decide on then you will need
modify code where you get the value.

The aspects that makes the value available can be compiled/weaved
into the code by the compiler/processor.

Arne