How to supply value to an annotation from a Constant java

Question

I am thinking this may not be possible in Java because annotation and its parameters are resolved at compile time. I have an interface as follows,

public interface FieldValues {
   String[] FIELD1 = new String[]{"value1", "value2"};
}

and another class as,

@SomeAnnotation(locations = {"value1", "value2"})
public class MyClass {
   ....
}

I mark many classes with the annotation and I would like to know if I can avoid specifying the strings in every annotation I would instead prefer to use

@SomeAnnotation(locations = FieldValues.FIELD1)
public class MyClass {
   ....
}

However this gives compilation errors like annotation value should be an array initializer etc. Does someone know how I can use a String constant or String[] constant to supply value to an annotation?

Answer 1

Compile constants can only be primitives and Strings:

15.28. Constant Expressions

A compile-time constant expression is an expression denoting a value of primitive type or a String that does not complete abruptly and is composed using only the following:

• Literals of primitive type and literals of type String
• Casts to primitive types and casts to type String
• [...] operators [...]
• Parenthesized expressions whose contained expression is a constant expression.
• Simple names that refer to constant variables.
• Qualified names of the form TypeName . Identifier that refer to constant variables.

Actually in java there is no way to protect items in an array. At runtime someone can always do FieldValues.FIELD1[0]="value3", therefore the array cannot be really constant if we look deeper.