How to declare aliases for annotation attributes in java?

[sidhartha pani]

HI, When I am going through the @AliasFor annotation in spring, they have introduced the topic "declare aliases for annotation attributes" ? Can some one explain me what is aliases for attributed?

Below the is code:
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({java.lang.annotation.ElementType.METHOD})
@Documented
public @interface AliasFor
{
 @AliasFor("attribute")
 String value() default "";
 
 @AliasFor("value")
 String attribute() default "";
 
 Class<? extends Annotation> annotation() default Annotation.class;
}

[Jesper de Jong]

It just means that the attributes 'value' and 'attribute' are different names for the same thing. This is sometimes convenient. It means that you can write: @Something(value = "hello") or @Something(attribute = "hello") and they mean exactly the same thing.

Note that the attribute named 'value' has special meaning with Java annotations; you can specify the value of the 'value' attribute without actually writing '(value = ...)'; you can just specify the value itself. In other words: @Something("hello") is the same as @Something(value = "hello") and if 'attribute' is an alias for 'value', then this is the same as @Something(attribute = "hello").

Note that the @AliasFor annotation is specific to the Spring framework. It will not work if you are not using the Spring framework.