I have a java annotation which takes a string constant as a argument , how can I Pass a string variable to the same?

Question

For Eg @FindBy(how = How.XPATH, using="//input[@name='Username']") here I want to replace the value of the string constant "//input[@name='Username']" with a string variable , even though I declare the variable as final I am unable to pass the variable as a parameter. I want to write like this

final   static String Username_xpath="//input[@name='Username']";   
@FindBy(how = How.XPATH, using=Username_xpath)      

Answer 1

No,you can not use variable in Annotation,only constant is permitted.

the following will work,because here Username_xpath is a constant:

final static String Username_xpath="//input[@name='Username']";
@FindBy(how = How.XPATH, using=Username_xpath)

Answer 2

You cannot use a variable as an annotation value because the annotation is already evaluated at compile time.

Therefore only compile time constants ( static final ) can be used as values in annotations.

Answer 3

Annotations are designed for compile-time or deployment-time processing. At this point you do not have any runtime variables. Therefore it is not possible to use variables in association with annotations.