```class SeonApi { companion object { ...

# announcements

[Dany]

class SeonApi {
    companion object {
        fun getEmailScore(emailInput: String): String {
            return "hello"
            var request: HttpRequest = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
                .GET()
                .uri(URI.create("<https://api.seon.io/SeonRestService/email-api/v2.0/>".plus(emailInput)))
                .setHeader("X-API-KEY", @Value("\${seon_api_key}")) //***************complained: "Annotation class cannot be instantiated"
                .build()
            var response: HttpResponse<String> = HttpClient.newHttpClient().send(request, BodyHandlers.ofString())
            return response.body()
        }
    }
}

This piece of code failed to compile and the debug. Had been spending 30 minutes debuging + googling without any success, anyone has a suggestion?

[Vampire]

If it fails to compile, what is the compile error?

[Vampire]

Probably unreachable code as you start your function with a return and everything after that can never be reached?

[Dany]

I commented in the code

[Dany]

It said "annotation class cannot be instantiated

[Vampire]

Yeah, isn't that obvious?
@Value("...") tries to create an instance of the annotation class Value and that cannot work

[Emil Kantis]

Annotations bind to the proceeding element (see java.lang.annotation.ElementType for valid targets). @Value for instance is commonly used to annotate constructor arguments or fields of a class to enable Spring injection. In your case you have no proceeding element, so it's just invalid code.

Another, more vanilla way, of achieving what I believe you want is to put your API key as an environment variable and load it with System.getenv(variableName) . Or you could go read up more on how to use Spring 🙂

[Dany]

Tried to understand what you were saying, with some Google around your suggestion and updated the code as follow.

companion object {
    fun getEmailScore(emailInput: String): String {
        @Value("\${seon_api_key}")
        val seon_api_key: String = ""
        var request: HttpRequest = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .GET()
            .uri(URI.create("<https://api.seon.io/SeonRestService/email-api/v2.0/>".plus(emailInput)))
            .setHeader("X-API-KEY", this.seon_api_key)
            .build()
        var response: HttpResponse<String> = HttpClient.newHttpClient().send(request, BodyHandlers.ofString())
        return response.body()
    }
}

Now it complains "This annotation is not applicable to target 'local variable'". And I was looking at example on Google, it was callabe inside a function

[Dany]

Sorry for kinda naive question, I dont have experience with Spring prior