Annotation processor

Purpose

The main caveat for retrofit is that it was not until runtime that retrofit validates the interfaces and their methods' annotations or return types as well as parameters'.

These could be done at compile time with help of annotation.

So we come up with a annotation processor which will validate the interface with only an extra annotation @RetrofitService

The interface marked by @RetrofitService will be checked by annotation processor to avoid some issues like a method is marked by @GET and @POST at the same time or a method has a return type of void.

Plan

• phase 1

  implement the annotation processor to check this processor should be consistent to the current retrofit aka compile time error at circumstances when retrofit would invoke methodError or parameterError

• phase 2

  implement the code generator to generate classes

  package your.packagename.whatever;
  @RetrofitService
  public interface YourInterface {
    @GET("/{param1}") @AnnotationsNotInRetrofit
    Observable<YourModel> sample(@Path("param1") @AnnotationsNotInRetrofit String param1);
    // and other methods 
  }

  the generated classes should look like this:

  package retrofit2.generated;
  public class YourInterfaceService {
    @AnnotationsNotInRetrofit
    public Observable<YourModel> sample(@AnnotationsNotInRetrofit String param1) {
      // generated code
    }
    public static YourInterface build(Retrofit retrofit) {
      // generated code
    }  
  }

  usage:

  package your.packagename.whatever;
  public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // just like how you used to build retrofit instance
        Retrofit retrofit = new Retrofit.Builder()
                .baseUrl(HttpUrl.get("https://example.com/"))
                .addConverterFactory(yourConverterFactory)
                .client(yourOkHttpClient)
                .build();
        YourInterface serviceInstance = YourInterfaceService.build(retrofit);
        Observable<YourModel> yourModelObservable = serviceInstance.sample("your_path");
        // do things with the method return value
    }
  }