Geomajas Community Documentation

5.1. API annotation

As Geomajas is a framework for building enterprise application, it is important to be very accurate about what exactly is considered part of the API, specifically which classes and interfaces and which methods in these classes and interfaces are considered as part of the API.

For this reason, we have introduced the "@Api" annotation. A class or interface is only considered part of the public API when it is annotated using "@Api". When all public methods in the class or interface are considered part of the API, you could use "@Api(allMethods = true)". The alternative is to annotate the individual methods.

The API includes many interfaces. These interfaces should only be implemented by client code when they are annotated by "@UserImplemented ". All other interfaces are provided to indicate the methods available on instances which are obtained through the API or Spring wiring and may have extra methods added in future versions.

All classes and methods which are indicated with "@Api" should also have a "@since" javadoc comment indicating the version in which the class or method was added to the API.

Note

Please beware that only the annotations determine whether something is part of the API or not. The manual may discuss things which are not considered API, probably because they are experimental.