Some of my Java classes have static methods marked with a special annotation, @Assert, containing sanity checks.
I'd like to perform these checks before any code gets actually executed. The best would be to call these methods from <clinit>. How to get similar behavior using AspectJ, and without modifying initial code?
AspectJ provides a staticinitialization(TypePattern) pointcut definition that will select existing static initializers and intercept them. Doesn't appear to be able to add static initializers to classes that don't have them, however.
Just to add to John's answer; the staticInitialization pointcut doesn't require there to be any static blocks, in which case it acts as a simple class load join point.
That would be the time to call your methods annotated with @Assert.
