Documentation Contents

# Dynamic Proxy Classes

## Contents

Introduction
Dynamic Proxy API
Serialization
Examples

## Introduction

A dynamic proxy class is a class that implements a list of interfaces specified at runtime such that a method invocation through one of the interfaces on an instance of the class will be encoded and dispatched to another object through a uniform interface. Thus, a dynamic proxy class can be used to create a type-safe proxy object for a list of interfaces without requiring pre-generation of the proxy class, such as with compile-time tools. Method invocations on an instance of a dynamic proxy class are dispatched to a single method in the instance's invocation handler, and they are encoded with a `java.lang.reflect.Method` object identifying the method that was invoked and an array of type `Object` containing the arguments.

Dynamic proxy classes are useful to an application or library that needs to provide type-safe reflective dispatch of invocations on objects that present interface APIs. For example, an application can use a dynamic proxy class to create an object that implements multiple arbitrary event listener interfaces-- interfaces that extend `java.util.EventListener`-- to process a variety of events of different types in a uniform fashion, such as by logging all such events to a file.

## Dynamic Proxy Class API

A dynamic proxy class (simply referred to as a proxy class below) is a class that implements a list of interfaces specified at runtime when the class is created.

A proxy interface is such an interface that is implemented by a proxy class.

A proxy instance is an instance of a proxy class.

### Creating a Proxy Class

Proxy classes, as well as instances of them, are created using the static methods of the class `java.lang.reflect.Proxy`.

The `Proxy.getProxyClass` method returns the `java.lang.Class` object for a proxy class given a class loader and an array of interfaces. The proxy class will be defined in the specified class loader and will implement all of the supplied interfaces. If a proxy class for the same permutation of interfaces has already been defined in the class loader, then the existing proxy class will be returned; otherwise, a proxy class for those interfaces will be generated dynamically and defined in the class loader.

There are several restrictions on the parameters that may be passed to `Proxy.getProxyClass`:

- All of the `Class` objects in the `interfaces` array must represent interfaces, not classes or primitive types.
- No two elements in the `interfaces` array may refer to identical `Class` objects.
- All of the interface types must be visible by name through the specified class loader. In other words, for class loader `cl` and every interface `i`, the following expression must be true:

              Class.forName(i.getName(), false, cl) == i

- All non-public interfaces must be in the same package; otherwise, it would not be possible for the proxy class to implement all of the interfaces, regardless of what package it is defined in.
- For any set of member methods of the specified interfaces that have the same signature:
  - If the return type of any of the methods is a primitive type or void, then all of the methods must have that same return type.
  - Otherwise, one of the methods must have a return type that is assignable to all of the return types of the rest of the methods.
- The resulting proxy class must not exceed any limits imposed on classes by the virtual machine. For example, the VM may limit the number of interfaces that a class may implement to 65535; in that case, the size of the `interfaces` array must not exceed 65535.

If any of these restrictions are violated, `Proxy.getProxyClass` will throw an `IllegalArgumentException`. If the `interfaces` array argument or any of its elements are `null`, a `NullPointerException` will be thrown.

Note that the order of the specified proxy interfaces is significant: two requests for a proxy class with the same combination of interfaces but in a different order will result in two distinct proxy classes. Proxy classes are distinguished by the order of their proxy interfaces in order to provide deterministic method invocation encoding in cases where two or more of the proxy interfaces share a method with the same name and parameter signature; this reasoning is described in more detail in the section below titled Methods Duplicated in Multiple Proxy Interfaces.

So that a new proxy class does not need to be generated each time `Proxy.getProxyClass` is invoked with the same class loader and list of interfaces, the implementation of the dynamic proxy class API should keep a cache of generated proxy classes, keyed by their corresponding loaders and interface list. The implementation should be careful not to refer to the class loaders, interfaces, and proxy classes in such a way as to prevent class loaders, and all of their classes, from being garbage collected when appropriate.

### Proxy Class Properties

A proxy class has the following properties:

- Proxy classes are public, final, and not abstract.
- The unqualified name of a proxy class is unspecified. The space of class names that begin with the string `"$Proxy"` is, however, to be reserved for proxy classes.
- A proxy class extends `java.lang.reflect.Proxy`.
- A proxy class implements exactly the interfaces specified at its creation, in the same order.
- If a proxy class implements a non-public interface, then it will be defined in the same package as that interface. Otherwise, the package of a proxy class is also unspecified. Note that package sealing will not prevent a proxy class from being successfully defined in a particular package at runtime, and neither will classes already defined in the same class loader and the same package with particular signers.
- Since a proxy class implements all of the interfaces specified at its creation, invoking `getInterfaces` on its `Class` object will return an array containing the same list of interfaces (in the order specified at its creation), invoking `getMethods` on its `Class` object will return an array of `Method` objects that include all of the methods in those interfaces, and invoking `getMethod` will find methods in the proxy interfaces as would be expected.
- The `Proxy.isProxyClass` method will return true if it is passed a proxy class-- a class returned by `Proxy.getProxyClass` or the class of an object returned by `Proxy.newProxyInstance`-- and false otherwise. The reliability of this method is important for the ability to use it to make security decisions, so its implementation should not just test if the class in question extends `java.lang.reflect.Proxy`.
- The `java.security.ProtectionDomain` of a proxy class is the same as that of system classes loaded by the bootstrap class loader, such as `java.lang.Object`, because the code for a proxy class is generated by trusted system code. This protection domain will typically be granted `java.security.AllPermission`.

### Creating a Proxy Instance

Each proxy class has one public constructor that takes one argument, an implementation of the interface `InvocationHandler`.

Each proxy instance has an associated invocation handler object, the one that was passed to its constructor. Rather than having to use the reflection API to access the public constructor, a proxy instance can be also be created by calling the `Proxy.newProxyInstance` method, which combines the actions of calling `Proxy.getProxyClass` with invoking the constructor with an invocation handler. `Proxy.newProxyInstance` throws `IllegalArgumentException` for the same reasons that `Proxy.getProxyClass` does.

### Proxy Instance Properties

A proxy instance has the following properties:

- Given a proxy instance `proxy` and one of the interfaces implemented by its proxy class `Foo`, the following expression will return true:

              proxy instanceof Foo

  and the following cast operation will succeed (rather than throwing a `ClassCastException`):

              (Foo) proxy

- The static `Proxy.getInvocationHandler` method will return the invocation handler associated with the proxy instance passed as its argument. If the object passed to `Proxy.getInvocationHandler` is not a proxy instance, then an `IllegalArgumentException` will be thrown.
- An interface method invocation on a proxy instance will be encoded and dispatched to the invocation handler's `invoke` method as described below.

  The proxy instance itself will be passed as the first argument of `invoke`, which is of type `Object`.

  The second argument passed to `invoke` will be the `java.lang.reflect.Method` instance corresponding to the interface method invoked on the proxy instance. The declaring class of the `Method` object will be the interface that the method was declared in, which may be a superinterface of the proxy interface that the proxy class inherits the method through.

  The third argument passed to `invoke` will be an array of objects containing the values of the arguments passed in the method invocation on the proxy instance. Arguments of primitive types are wrapped in an instance of the appropriate primitive wrapper class, such as `java.lang.Integer` or `java.lang.Boolean`. The implementation of the `invoke` method is free to modify the contents of this array.

  The value returned by the `invoke` method will become the return value of the method invocation on the proxy instance. If the declared return value of the interface method is a primitive type, then the value returned by `invoke` must be an instance of the corresponding primitive wrapper class; otherwise, it must be a type assignable to the declared return type. If the value returned by `invoke` is `null` and the interface method's return type is primitive, then a `NullPointerException` will be thrown by the method invocation on the proxy instance. If the value returned by `invoke` is otherwise not compatible with the method's declared return type as described above, a `ClassCastException` will be thrown by the proxy instance.

  If an exception is thrown by the `invoke` method, it will be also thrown by the method invocation on the proxy instance. The exception's type must be assignable to either any of the exception types declared in the signature of the interface method or to the unchecked exception types `java.lang.RuntimeException` or `java.lang.Error`. If a checked exception is thrown by `invoke` that is not assignable to any of the exception types declared in the `throws` clause of the interface method, then an `UndeclaredThrowableException` will be thrown by the method invocation on the proxy instance. The `UndeclaredThrowableException` will be constructed with the exception that was thrown by the `invoke` method.

- An invocation of the `hashCode`, `equals`, or `toString` methods declared in `java.lang.Object` on a proxy instance will be encoded and dispatched to the invocation handler's `invoke` method in the same manner as interface method invocations are encoded and dispatched, as described above. The declaring class of the `Method` object passed to `invoke` will be `java.lang.Object`. Other public methods of a proxy instance inherited from `java.lang.Object` are not overridden by a proxy class, so invocations of those methods behave like they do for instances of `java.lang.Object`.

### Methods Duplicated in Multiple Proxy Interfaces

When two or more interfaces of a proxy class contain a method with the same name and parameter signature, the order of the proxy class's interfaces becomes significant. When such a duplicate method is invoked on a proxy instance, the `Method` object passed to the invocation handler will not necessarily be the one whose declaring class is assignable from the reference type of the interface that the proxy's method was invoked through. This limitation exists because the corresponding method implementation in the generated proxy class cannot determine which interface it was invoked through. Therefore, when a duplicate method is invoked on a proxy instance, the `Method` object for the method in the foremost interface that contains the method (either directly or inherited through a superinterface) in the proxy class's list of interfaces is passed to the invocation handler's `invoke` method, regardless of the reference type through which the method invocation occurred.

If a proxy interface contains a method with the same name and parameter signature as the `hashCode`, `equals`, or `toString` methods of `java.lang.Object`, when such a method is invoked on a proxy instance, the `Method` object passed to the invocation handler will have `java.lang.Object` as its declaring class. In other words, the public, non-final methods of `java.lang.Object` logically precede all of the proxy interfaces for the determination of which `Method` object to pass to the invocation handler.

Note also that when a duplicate method is dispatched to an invocation handler, the `invoke` method may only throw checked exception types that are assignable to one of the exception types in the `throws` clause of the method in all of the proxy interfaces that it can be invoked through. If the `invoke` method throws a checked exception that is not assignable to any of the exception types declared by the method in one of the proxy interfaces that it can be invoked through, then an unchecked `UndeclaredThrowableException` will be thrown by the invocation on the proxy instance. This restriction means that not all of the exception types returned by invoking `getExceptionTypes` on the `Method` object passed to the `invoke` method can necessarily be thrown successfully by the `invoke` method.

## Serialization

Since `java.lang.reflect.Proxy` implements `java.io.Serializable`, proxy instances can be serialized, as described in this section. If a proxy instance contains an invocation handler that is not assignable to `java.io.Serializable`, however, then a `java.io.NotSerializableException` will be thrown if such an instance is written to a `java.io.ObjectOutputStream`. Note that for proxy classes, implementing `java.io.Externalizable` has the same effect with respect to serialization as implementing `java.io.Serializable`: the `writeExternal` and `readExternal` methods of the `Externalizable` interface will never be invoked on a proxy instance (or an invocation handler) as part of its serialization process. As with all `Class` objects, the `Class` object for a proxy class is always serializable.

A proxy class has no serializable fields and a `serialVersionUID` of `0L`. In other words, when the `Class` object for a proxy class is passed to the static `lookup` method of `java.io.ObjectStreamClass`, the returned `ObjectStreamClass` instance will have the following properties:

- Invoking its `getSerialVersionUID` method will return `0L`.
- Invoking its `getFields` method will return an array of length zero.
- Invoking its `getField` method with any `String` argument will return `null`.

The stream protocol for Object Serialization supports a type code named `TC_PROXYCLASSDESC`, which is a terminal symbol in the grammar for the stream format; its type and value are defined by the following constant field in the `java.io.ObjectStreamConstants` interface:

        final static byte TC_PROXYCLASSDESC = (byte)0x7D;

The grammar also includes the following two rules, the first being an alternate expansion of the original newClassDesc rule:

newClassDesc:
`TC_PROXYCLASSDESC` newHandle proxyClassDescInfo

proxyClassDescInfo:
`(int)<count>` proxyInterfaceName[count] classAnnotation superClassDesc

proxyInterfaceName:
`(utf)`

When an `ObjectOutputStream` serializes the class descriptor for a class that is a proxy class, as determined by passing its `Class` object to the `Proxy.isProxyClass` method, it uses the `TC_PROXYCLASSDESC` type code instead of `TC_CLASSDESC`, following the rules above. In the expansion of proxyClassDescInfo, the sequence of proxyInterfaceName items are the names of all of the interfaces implemented by the proxy class, in the order that they are returned by invoking the `getInterfaces` method on the `Class` object. The classAnnotation and superClassDesc items have the same meaning as they do in the classDescInfo rule. For a proxy class, superClassDesc is the class descriptor for its superclass, `java.lang.reflect.Proxy`; including this descriptor allows for the evolution of the serialized representation of the class `Proxy` for proxy instances.

For non-proxy classes, `ObjectOutputStream` calls its protected `annotateClass` method to allow subclasses to write custom data to the stream for a particular class. For proxy classes, instead of `annotateClass`, the following method in `java.io.ObjectOutputStream` is called with the `Class` object for the proxy class:

        protected void annotateProxyClass(Class cl) throws IOException;

The default implementation of `annotateProxyClass` in `ObjectOutputStream` does nothing.

When an `ObjectInputStream` encounters the type code `TC_PROXYCLASSDESC`, it deserializes the class descriptor for a proxy class from the stream, formatted as described above. Instead of calling its `resolveClass` method to resolve the `Class` object for the class descriptor, the following method in `java.io.ObjectInputStream` is called:

        protected Class resolveProxyClass(String[] interfaces)
            throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException;

The list of interface names that were deserialized in the proxy class descriptor are passed as the `interfaces` argument to `resolveProxyClass`.

The default implementation of `resolveProxyClass` in `ObjectInputStream` returns the results of calling `Proxy.getProxyClass` with the list of `Class` objects for the interfaces named in the `interfaces` parameter. The `Class` object used for each interface name `i` is the value retuned by calling

            Class.forName(i, false, loader)

where `loader` is the first non-null class loader up the execution stack, or `null` if no non-null class loaders are on the stack. This is the same class loader choice made by the default behavior of the `resolveClass` method. This same value of `loader` is also the class loader passed to `Proxy.getProxyClass`. If `Proxy.getProxyClass` throws an `IllegalArgumentException`, `resolveClass` will throw a `ClassNotFoundException` containing the `IllegalArgumentException`.

Since a proxy class never has its own serializable fields, the classdata[] in the stream representation of a proxy instance consists wholly of the instance data for its superclass, `java.lang.reflect.Proxy`. `Proxy` has one serializable field, `h`, which contains the invocation handler for the proxy instance.

## Examples

Here is a simple example that prints out a message before and after a method invocation on an object that implements an arbitrary list of interfaces:

    public interface Foo {
        Object bar(Object obj) throws BazException;
    }

    public class FooImpl implements Foo {
        Object bar(Object obj) throws BazException {
            // ...
        }
    }

    public class DebugProxy implements java.lang.reflect.InvocationHandler {

        private Object obj;

        public static Object newInstance(Object obj) {
            return java.lang.reflect.Proxy.newProxyInstance(
                obj.getClass().getClassLoader(),
                obj.getClass().getInterfaces(),
                new DebugProxy(obj));
        }

        private DebugProxy(Object obj) {
            this.obj = obj;
        }

        public Object invoke(Object proxy, Method m, Object[] args)
            throws Throwable
        {
            Object result;
            try {
                System.out.println("before method " + m.getName());
                result = m.invoke(obj, args);
            } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {
                throw e.getTargetException();
            } catch (Exception e) {
                throw new RuntimeException("unexpected invocation exception: " +
                                           e.getMessage());
            } finally {
                System.out.println("after method " + m.getName());
            }
            return result;
        }
    }

To construct a `DebugProxy` for an implementation of the `Foo` interface and call one of its methods:

        Foo foo = (Foo) DebugProxy.newInstance(new FooImpl());
        foo.bar(null);

Here is an example of a utility invocation handler class that provides default proxy behavior for methods inherited from `java.lang.Object` and implements delegation of certain proxy method invocations to distinct objects depending on the interface of the invoked method:

    import java.lang.reflect.*;

    public class Delegator implements InvocationHandler {

        // preloaded Method objects for the methods in java.lang.Object
        private static Method hashCodeMethod;
        private static Method equalsMethod;
        private static Method toStringMethod;
        static {
            try {
                hashCodeMethod = Object.class.getMethod("hashCode", null);
                equalsMethod =
                    Object.class.getMethod("equals", new Class[] { Object.class });
                toStringMethod = Object.class.getMethod("toString", null);
            } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
                throw new NoSuchMethodError(e.getMessage());
            }
        }

        private Class[] interfaces;
        private Object[] delegates;

        public Delegator(Class[] interfaces, Object[] delegates) {
            this.interfaces = (Class[]) interfaces.clone();
            this.delegates = (Object[]) delegates.clone();
        }

        public Object invoke(Object proxy, Method m, Object[] args)
            throws Throwable
        {
            Class declaringClass = m.getDeclaringClass();

            if (declaringClass == Object.class) {
                if (m.equals(hashCodeMethod)) {
                    return proxyHashCode(proxy);
                } else if (m.equals(equalsMethod)) {
                    return proxyEquals(proxy, args[0]);
                } else if (m.equals(toStringMethod)) {
                    return proxyToString(proxy);
                } else {
                    throw new InternalError(
                        "unexpected Object method dispatched: " + m);
                }
            } else {
                for (int i = 0; i < interfaces.length; i++) {
                    if (declaringClass.isAssignableFrom(interfaces[i])) {
                        try {
                            return m.invoke(delegates[i], args);
                        } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {
                            throw e.getTargetException();
                        }
                    }
                }

                return invokeNotDelegated(proxy, m, args);
            }
        }

        protected Object invokeNotDelegated(Object proxy, Method m,
                                            Object[] args)
            throws Throwable
        {
            throw new InternalError("unexpected method dispatched: " + m);
        }

        protected Integer proxyHashCode(Object proxy) {
            return new Integer(System.identityHashCode(proxy));
        }

        protected Boolean proxyEquals(Object proxy, Object other) {
            return (proxy == other ? Boolean.TRUE : Boolean.FALSE);
        }

        protected String proxyToString(Object proxy) {
            return proxy.getClass().getName() + '@' +
                Integer.toHexString(proxy.hashCode());
        }
    }

Subclasses of `Delegator` can override `invokeNotDelegated` to implement the behavior of proxy method invocations not to be directly delegated to other objects, and they can override `proxyHashCode`, `proxyEquals`, and `proxyToString` to override the default behavior of the methods the proxy inherits from `java.lang.Object`.

To construct a `Delegator` for an implementation of the `Foo` interface:

        Class[] proxyInterfaces = new Class[] { Foo.class };
        Foo foo = (Foo) Proxy.newProxyInstance(Foo.class.getClassLoader(),
            proxyInterfaces,
            new Delegator(proxyInterfaces, new Object[] { new FooImpl() }));

Note that the implementation of the `Delegator` class given above is intended to be more illustrative than optimized; for example, instead of caching and comparing the `Method` objects for the `hashCode`, `equals`, and `toString` methods, it could just match them by their string names, because none of those method names are overloaded in `java.lang.Object`.

Copyright © 1993, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Contact Us