Using the @ToString annotation

One of the annotation types of AnnoJ is @ToString. With @ToString you can leave the implementation of the toString() methods to AnnoJ. After bootstrapping your application you can use toString() as if you implemented it manually.

To generate the toString() method in a class simply put the @ToString annotation just before the class definition:

@ToString
	public class InterestingClass{
		private Integer x;
                private String s;
                // more code
	}

After bootstrapping the application AnnoJ will generate a toString() method similar to this:

public String toString(){

return "[" + (this.x==null?"":"x="+this.x) + "," + (this.s==null?"":"s="+this.s) + "]";

}

If you want to leave x from the method just place the @Exclude annotation before the field:

@ToString
	public class InterestingClass{
                @Exclude
		private Integer x;
                private String s;
                // more code
	}

To generate a toString() method in all classes of a package you should define a public class named PackageInfo and annotate it with @ToString:

@ToString public class PackageInfo{}

In the future versions of AnnoJ there will be an option to leave out from toString() generation all fields with a given visiblity and you will be able to use the @Include annotation together with @ToString.

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