What's the difference between interface and @interface in java?

Question

I haven\'t touched Java since using JBuilder in the late 90\'s while at University, so I\'m a little out of touch - at any rate I\'ve been working on a small Java project th

Answer 1

interface in the Java programming language is an abstract type that is used to specify a behavior that classes must implement. They are similar to protocols. Interfaces are declared using the interface keyword

@interface is used to create your own (custom) Java annotations. Annotations are defined in their own file, just like a Java class or interface. Here is custom Java annotation example:

@interface MyAnnotation {

    String   value();

    String   name();
    int      age();
    String[] newNames();

}

This example defines an annotation called MyAnnotation which has four elements. Notice the @interface keyword. This signals to the Java compiler that this is a Java annotation definition.

Notice that each element is defined similarly to a method definition in an interface. It has a data type and a name. You can use all primitive data types as element data types. You can also use arrays as data type. You cannot use complex objects as data type.

To use the above annotation, you could use code like this:

@MyAnnotation(
    value="123",
    name="Jakob",
    age=37,
    newNames={"Jenkov", "Peterson"}
)
public class MyClass {


}

Reference - http://tutorials.jenkov.com/java/annotations.html