Annotations

Dogs make strong use of annotations to generate code for you and to add functionality to your classes and fields. Even though some annotations only work by using the code generator, many are also available for use without code generation at runtime.

To achieve this extensibility without directly depending on the code generator, dogs retains all annotations implementing StructureMetadata in the structure definition. This is accomplished by reconstructing the constructor call of the annotation using the code_generator and the lyell companion library.

Validation

Validation is one of the features of dogs that makes heavy use of retained annotations. All annotation validators are created by making the annotation class extend StructureMetadata and implement FieldValidator or ClassValidator. When constructing the validation mode for the generated structure, the field annotations are collected and the individual validators are created.

Converter Supplier

Using the ConverterSupplyingVisitor interface, you can supply a converter for the annotated field.

Code Examples

Getting a single field annotation

DogStructureField field; /* Get field here*/
final supplier = field.firstAnnotationOf<ConverterSupplyingVisitor>();
if (supplier != null) {
  return supplier.resolve(structure, field, engine);
}

Getting multiple class annotations

DogStructure structure; /* Get structure here*/
var classValidators = structure.annotationsOf<ClassValidator>().toList();