Is there something like Annotation Inheritance in java?

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You can annotate your annotation with a base annotation instead of inheritance. This is used in Spring framework.

To give an example

@Target(value = {ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE})
public @interface Vehicle {
}

@Target(value = {ElementType.TYPE})
@Vehicle
public @interface Car {
}

@Car
class Foo {
}

You can then check if a class is annotated with Vehicle using Spring’s AnnotationUtils:

Vehicle vehicleAnnotation = AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation (Foo.class, Vehicle.class);
boolean isAnnotated = vehicleAnnotation != null;

This method is implemented as:

public static <A extends Annotation> A findAnnotation(Class<?> clazz, Class<A> annotationType) {
    return findAnnotation(clazz, annotationType, new HashSet<Annotation>());
}

@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
private static <A extends Annotation> A findAnnotation(Class<?> clazz, Class<A> annotationType, Set<Annotation> visited) {
    try {
        Annotation[] anns = clazz.getDeclaredAnnotations();
        for (Annotation ann : anns) {
            if (ann.annotationType() == annotationType) {
                return (A) ann;
            }
        }
        for (Annotation ann : anns) {
            if (!isInJavaLangAnnotationPackage(ann) && visited.add(ann)) {
                A annotation = findAnnotation(ann.annotationType(), annotationType, visited);
                if (annotation != null) {
                    return annotation;
                }
            }
        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex) {
        handleIntrospectionFailure(clazz, ex);
        return null;
    }

    for (Class<?> ifc : clazz.getInterfaces()) {
        A annotation = findAnnotation(ifc, annotationType, visited);
        if (annotation != null) {
            return annotation;
        }
    }

    Class<?> superclass = clazz.getSuperclass();
    if (superclass == null || Object.class == superclass) {
        return null;
    }
    return findAnnotation(superclass, annotationType, visited);
}

AnnotationUtils also contains additional methods for searching for annotations on methods and other annotated elements. The Spring class is also powerful enough to search through bridged methods, proxies, and other corner-cases, particularly those encountered in Spring.

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