Class RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations

The RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute is similar to the RuntimeVisibleAnnotations attribute, except that the annotations represented by a RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute must not be made available for return by reflective APIs, unless the JVM has been instructed to retain these annotations via some implementation-specific mechanism such as a command line flag. In the absence of such instructions, the JVM ignores this attribute.

The RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute is a variable length attribute in the attributes table of the ClassFile, field_info, and method_info structures. The RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute records runtime-invisible Java programming language annotations on the corresponding class, method, or field. Each ClassFile, field_info, and method_info structure may contain at most one RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute, which records all the runtime-invisible Java programming language annotations on the corresponding program element.

The RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations attribute has the following format:

   RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations_attribute {
     u2 attribute_name_index;
     u4 attribute_length;
     u2 num_annotations;
     annotation annotations[num_annotations];
   }
 

The items of the RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations structure are as follows:

attribute_name_index

The value of the attribute_name_index item must be a valid index into the constant_pool table. The constant_pool entry at that index must be a CONSTANT_Utf8_info structure representing the string "RuntimeInvisibleAnnotations".

attribute_length

The value of the attribute_length item indicates the length of the attribute, excluding the initial six bytes. The value of the attribute_length item is thus dependent on the number of runtime-invisible annotations represented by the structure, and their values.

num_annotations

The value of the num_annotations item gives the number of runtime-invisible annotations represented by the structure. Note that a maximum of 65535 runtime-invisible Java programming language annotations may be directly attached to a program element.

annotations

Each value of the annotations table represents a single runtime-invisible annotation on a program element.

Author: Eugene Kuleshov

See Also: JSR 175 : A Metadata Facility for the Java Programming Language