Reflective access to a source-only annotation

Reports attempts to reflectively check for the presence of a non-runtime annotation.

Using Class.isAnnotationPresent() to test for an annotation whose retention policy is set to SOURCE or CLASS (the default) will always have a negative result. This mistake is easy to overlook.

Example:

  {
    getClass().isAnnotationPresent(SourceAnnotation.class); //always false
  }

  @Retention(RetentionPolicy.SOURCE)
  @interface SourceAnnotation {}

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

ReflectionForUnavailableAnnotation

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Probable bugs

This inspection depends on the Java feature 'Annotations' which is available since Java 5.

Availability

By default bundled with: IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1, Qodana for JVM 2024.1,
Can be installed with plugin: Java, 241.18072

Last modified: 18 June 2024