Answer by Koray Tugay for Spring AOP - why do i need aspectjweaver?

You need the aspectjtools or the aspectjweaver dependencies when you use the AspectJ pointcut expression language.

Please see the following classes:

Foo.java

public interface Foo {
    void foo();
    void baz();
}

FooImpl.java

public class FooImpl implements Foo {
    @Override
    public void foo() {
        System.out.println("Foo!");
    }

    @Override
    public void baz() {
        System.out.println("Baz!");
    }
}

MethodBeforeAdviceBarImpl.java

import org.springframework.aop.MethodBeforeAdvice;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;

public class MethodBeforeAdviceBarImpl implements MethodBeforeAdvice {
    @Override
    public void before(Method method, Object[] args, Object target) throws Throwable {
        System.out.println("Bar!");
    }
}

And please see App.java version - 1

import org.springframework.aop.MethodBeforeAdvice;
import org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactory;
import org.springframework.aop.support.NameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor;

public class App {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final MethodBeforeAdvice advice = new MethodBeforeAdviceBarImpl();

        final NameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor nameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor = new NameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor();
        nameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor.setMappedName("foo");
        nameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor.setAdvice(advice);

        final ProxyFactory proxyFactory = new ProxyFactory();
        proxyFactory.addAdvisor(nameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor);

        final Foo foo = new FooImpl();
        proxyFactory.setTarget(foo);

        final Foo fooProxy = (Foo) proxyFactory.getProxy();
        fooProxy.foo();
        fooProxy.baz();
    }
}

The output of running this example will be:

Bar!
Foo!
Baz!

I only need the org.springframework:spring-context.jar in my classpath. Now instead of a NameMatchMethodPointcutAdvisor, lets use AspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor:

import org.springframework.aop.MethodBeforeAdvice;
import org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor;
import org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactory;

public class App {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final MethodBeforeAdvice advice = new MethodBeforeAdviceBarImpl();

        final AspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor aspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor = new AspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor();
        aspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor.setAdvice(advice);
        aspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor.setExpression("execution(void biz.tugay.spashe.Foo.foo())");

        final ProxyFactory proxyFactory = new ProxyFactory();
        proxyFactory.addAdvisor(aspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor);

        final Foo foo = new FooImpl();
        proxyFactory.setTarget(foo);

        final Foo fooProxy = (Foo) proxyFactory.getProxy();
        fooProxy.foo();
        fooProxy.baz();
    }
}

Again, if I only have the spring-context.jar in my classpath, I will get:

An exception occured while executing the Java class. null: InvocationTargetException: org/aspectj/weaver/reflect/ReflectionWorld$ReflectionWorldException: org.aspectj.weaver.reflect.ReflectionWorld$ReflectionWorldException

When you investigate the AspectJExpressionPointcutAdvisor class, you will see that it extends AbstractGenericPointcutAdvisor and which delegates the work to an instance of AspectJExpressionPointcut. And you can see that AspectJExpressionPointcut has the following import statements:

import org.aspectj.weaver.patterns.NamePattern;
import org.aspectj.weaver.reflect.ReflectionWorld.ReflectionWorldException;
import org.aspectj.weaver.reflect.ShadowMatchImpl;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.ContextBasedMatcher;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.FuzzyBoolean;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.JoinPointMatch;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.MatchingContext;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.PointcutDesignatorHandler;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.PointcutExpression;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.PointcutParameter;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.PointcutParser;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.PointcutPrimitive;
import org.aspectj.weaver.tools.ShadowMatch;

You will need the aspectjtools dependency in your classpath in runtime so AspectJExpressionPointcut can load the classes it needs.