Scanning Java annotations at runtime

And another solution is ronmamo's Reflections.

Quick review:

• Spring solution is the way to go if you're using Spring. Otherwise it's a big dependency.
• Using ASM directly is a bit cumbersome.
• Using Java Assist directly is clunky too.
• Annovention is super lightweight and convenient. No maven integration yet.
• Reflections indexes everything and then is super fast.

Use org.springframework.context.annotation.ClassPathScanningCandidateComponentProvider

API

A component provider that scans the classpath from a base package. It then applies exclude and include filters to the resulting classes to find candidates.

ClassPathScanningCandidateComponentProvider scanner =
new ClassPathScanningCandidateComponentProvider(<DO_YOU_WANT_TO_USE_DEFALT_FILTER>);

scanner.addIncludeFilter(new AnnotationTypeFilter(<TYPE_YOUR_ANNOTATION_HERE>.class));

for (BeanDefinition bd : scanner.findCandidateComponents(<TYPE_YOUR_BASE_PACKAGE_HERE>))
    System.out.println(bd.getBeanClassName());