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* ASM: a very small and fast Java bytecode manipulation framework | |
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Provides a small and fast bytecode manipulation framework. | |
<p> | |
The <a href="http://www.objectweb.org/asm">ASM</a> framework is organized | |
around the {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor}, | |
{@link org.objectweb.asm.FieldVisitor FieldVisitor} and | |
{@link org.objectweb.asm.MethodVisitor MethodVisitor} interfaces, which allow | |
one to visit the fields and methods of a class, including the bytecode | |
instructions of each method. | |
<p> | |
In addition to these main interfaces, ASM provides a {@link | |
org.objectweb.asm.ClassReader ClassReader} class, that can parse an | |
existing class and make a given visitor visit it. ASM also provides | |
a {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassWriter ClassWriter} class, which is | |
a visitor that generates Java class files. | |
<p> | |
In order to generate a class from scratch, only the {@link | |
org.objectweb.asm.ClassWriter ClassWriter} class is necessary. Indeed, | |
in order to generate a class, one must just call its visit<i>XXX</i> | |
methods with the appropriate arguments to generate the desired fields | |
and methods. See the "helloworld" example in the ASM distribution for | |
more details about class generation. | |
<p> | |
In order to modify existing classes, one must use a {@link | |
org.objectweb.asm.ClassReader ClassReader} class to analyze | |
the original class, a class modifier, and a {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassWriter | |
ClassWriter} to construct the modified class. The class modifier | |
is just a {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor} | |
that delegates most of the work to another {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassVisitor | |
ClassVisitor}, but that sometimes changes some parameter values, | |
or call additional methods, in order to implement the desired | |
modification process. In order to make it easier to implement such | |
class modifiers, ASM provides the {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassAdapter | |
ClassAdapter} and {@link org.objectweb.asm.MethodAdapter MethodAdapter} | |
classes, which implement the {@link org.objectweb.asm.ClassVisitor ClassVisitor} | |
and {@link org.objectweb.asm.MethodVisitor MethodVisitor} interfaces by | |
delegating all work to other visitors. See the "adapt" example in the ASM | |
distribution for more details about class modification. | |
<p> | |
The size of the core ASM library, <tt>asm.jar</tt>, is only 42KB, which is much | |
smaller than the size of the | |
<a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/bcel">BCEL</a> library (504KB), and than the | |
size of the | |
<a href="http://serp.sourceforge.net">SERP</a> library (150KB). ASM is also | |
much faster than these tools. Indeed the overhead of a load time class | |
transformation process is of the order of 60% with ASM, 700% or more with BCEL, | |
and 1100% or more with SERP (see the <tt>test/perf</tt> directory in the ASM | |
distribution)! | |
@since ASM 1.3 | |
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