ONJava.com: Introduction to the ASM 2.0 Bytecode Framework

ONJava.com: Introduction to the ASM 2.0 Bytecode Framework: "

Introduction to the ASM 2.0 Bytecode Framework
by Eugene Kuleshov
08/17/2005

Java features such as dynamic class loading and reflection make it a dynamic language. However, in many cases, reflection is not sufficient, and developers need to generate bytecode from non-Java source code, such as scripting languages like Groovy (JSR-241) or BeanShell (JSR-274), or from metadata such as an OR-mapping configuration. When working with existing classes, and especially when original Java sources are not available, some tools may need to do a static analysis of the interdependencies or even method behavior in order to produce test coverage or metrics, or to detect bugs and anti-patterns. New features added to into Java 5, such as annotations and generics, affected bytecode structure and require special attention from bytecode manipulation tools to maintain good performance. This article will give an overview of one of the smallest and fastest bytecode manipulation frameworks available for Java."