Reflections library not working when used in an Eclipse plug-in

Question

I have developed an application using the Reflections library for querying all the classes having a particular annotation. Everything was working like a charm until I decided to create an Eclipse plug-in from my application. Then Reflections stop working.

Given that my application is working fine when not part of an Eclipse plug-in, I think it should be a class-loader problem. So I added to my Reflections class the classloaders of the plug-in activator class, the context class loader, and all other class loaders I could imagine, without any success. This is a simplified version of my code:

ConfigurationBuilder config = new ConfigurationBuilder();
config.addClassLoaders(thePluginActivatorClassLoader);
config.addClassLoaders(ClasspathHelper.getContextClassLoader());
config.addClassLoaders("all the classloaders I could imagine");
config.filterInputsBy(new FilterBuilder().include("package I want to analyze"));

Reflections reflections = new Reflections(config);
Set<Class<?>> classes = reflections.getTypesAnnotatedWith(MyAnnotation.class); //this Set is empty

I also tried adding URLs of the classes I want to load to the ConfigurationBuilder class, but it did not help.

Could someone tell me if there is a way to make Reflections work as part of an Eclipse plug-in ?, or should I better look for another alternative ?. Thanks a lot, I am really puzzled about it.

Answer 1

I assume you already know how to create bundles (otherwise, check this).

After some debuging and exploration of Reflections API I have realised that the problem is that Reflections simply fails to read OSGi URLs (bundleresource://...) resulting in an exception:

org.reflections.ReflectionsException: could not create Vfs.Dir from url, 
no matching UrlType was found [bundleresource://1009.fwk651584550/]

and this suggestion:

either use fromURL(final URL url, final List<UrlType> urlTypes) 
or use the static setDefaultURLTypes(final List<UrlType> urlTypes) 
or addDefaultURLTypes(UrlType urlType) with your specialized UrlType.

So I believe implementing a UrlType for OSGi (e.g. class BundleUrlType implements UrlType {...}) and registering it like this:

Vfs.addDefaultURLTypes(new BundleUrlType());

should make Reflections API usable from inside a bundle. Reflections dependencies should be added to the Eclipse Plugin project as described here.

This is how my sample MANIFEST.MF looked like after adding needed jars:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Bundle-ManifestVersion: 2
Bundle-Name: ReflectivePlugin
Bundle-SymbolicName: ReflectivePlugin
Bundle-Version: 1.0.0.qualifier
Bundle-Activator: reflectiveplugin.Activator
Bundle-ActivationPolicy: lazy
Bundle-RequiredExecutionEnvironment: JavaSE-1.6
Import-Package: javax.annotation;version="1.0.0",
 org.osgi.framework;version="1.3.0",
 org.osgi.service.log;version="1.3",
 org.osgi.util.tracker;version="1.3.1"
Bundle-ClassPath: .,
 lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar,
 lib/guava-r08.jar,
 lib/javassist-3.12.1.GA.jar,
 lib/reflections-0.9.5.jar,
 lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar,
 lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar
Export-Package: reflectiveplugin, 
 reflectiveplugin.data

Note: Used Reflections v. 0.9.5

Here's a sample UrlType implementation:

package reflectiveplugin;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.Iterator;

import org.osgi.framework.Bundle;
import org.reflections.vfs.Vfs;
import org.reflections.vfs.Vfs.Dir;
import org.reflections.vfs.Vfs.File;
import org.reflections.vfs.Vfs.UrlType;

import com.google.common.collect.AbstractIterator;

public class BundleUrlType implements UrlType {

    public static final String BUNDLE_PROTOCOL = "bundleresource";

    private final Bundle bundle;

    public BundleUrlType(Bundle bundle) {
        this.bundle = bundle;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean matches(URL url) {
        return BUNDLE_PROTOCOL.equals(url.getProtocol());
    }

    @Override
    public Dir createDir(URL url) {
        return new BundleDir(bundle, url);
    }

    public class BundleDir implements Dir {

        private String path;
        private final Bundle bundle;

        public BundleDir(Bundle bundle, URL url) {
            this(bundle, url.getPath());
        }

        public BundleDir(Bundle bundle, String p) {
            this.bundle = bundle;
            this.path = p;
            if (path.startsWith(BUNDLE_PROTOCOL + ":")) { 
                path = path.substring((BUNDLE_PROTOCOL + ":").length()); 
            }
        }

        @Override
        public String getPath() {
            return path;
        }

        @Override
        public Iterable<File> getFiles() {
            return new Iterable<Vfs.File>() {
                public Iterator<Vfs.File> iterator() {
                    return new AbstractIterator<Vfs.File>() {
                        final Enumeration<URL> entries = bundle.findEntries(path, "*.class", true);

                        protected Vfs.File computeNext() {
                            return entries.hasMoreElements() ? new BundleFile(BundleDir.this, entries.nextElement()) : endOfData();
                        }
                    };
                }
            };
        }

        @Override
        public void close() { }
    }

    public class BundleFile implements File {

        private final BundleDir dir;
        private final String name;
        private final URL url;

        public BundleFile(BundleDir dir, URL url) {
            this.dir = dir;
            this.url = url;
            String path = url.getFile();
            this.name = path.substring(path.lastIndexOf("/") + 1);
        }

        @Override
        public String getName() {
            return name;
        }

        @Override
        public String getRelativePath() {
            return getFullPath().substring(dir.getPath().length());
        }

        @Override
        public String getFullPath() {
            return url.getFile();
        }

        @Override
        public InputStream openInputStream() throws IOException {
            return url.openStream();
        }
    }
}

And this is how I create reflections in the Activator class:

private Reflections createReflections(Bundle bundle) {
    Vfs.addDefaultURLTypes(new BundleUrlType(bundle));
    Reflections reflections = new Reflections(new Object[] { "reflectiveplugin.data" });
    return reflections;
}

The last bit is very confusing, but still important: if you run your plugin inside of Eclipse (Run As / OSGi Framework) you have to add also your classes output directory to the Reflections path patterns (i.e. "bin" or "target/classes"). Although, it's not needed for a released plugin (to build a plugin/bundle do "Export"->"Deployable plug-ins and fragments").