[antlr-interest] Code generation advice

[Matt Benson]

Hi, Scott--and thanks for ANTLREclipse, which (never having moved past
v2) I still use.  ;)  Actually, embedded in my original email was the
fact that I have looked at xtext and making it do what I'm looking for
is at least an endeavor whose HOWTO is non-obvious.  AFAICT, its focus
is on parsing a DSL into a Java model:  well and good, but I know how
to do that with ANTLR.  Xtext might well make this job easier, but in
my case, I want more or less to bypass the idea of parsing a DSL and
simply use the same meta-grammar to describe an embedded DSL whose
rules are actually invoked as Java methods.  Possibly xtext *can* do
this, but so far its documentation is quite obtuse to me, and I have
yet to see anything in its examples that suggests that it would give
me a leg up on this particular task.

@Eric:  your question is answered ;)

Regards,
Matt

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Scott Stanchfield <scott at javadude.com> wrote:
> Have you taken a look at xtext ( http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/) It uses a
> grammar similar to antlr to generate model interfaces/classes, a
> syntax-highlighting editor (optional, but very useful), persistence manager
> and other doodads. Under the covers it uses antlr to do the actual parsing.
>
> xtext is intended for DSL definition and is rather mature, too.
>
> As a really short example (from the xtext site):
>
> grammar org.xtext.example.mydsl.MyDsl
>     with org.eclipse.xtext.common.Terminals
>
> generate myDsl "http://www.xtext.org/example/mydsl/MyDsl"
>
> Model:
>     greetings+=Greeting*;
>
> Greeting:
>     'Hello' name=ID '!';
>
> would generate a Model class that has a property greetings which is a list
> of Greeting instances, and a Greeting class that has a name property.
>
> I don't know if it fits exactly what you're looking for, but it's worth
> taking a look.
> -- Scott
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Scott Stanchfield
> http://javadude.com
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Matt Benson <gudnabrsam at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What I want to do is make it easier to write an EDSL by having it
>> specified like any other grammar, generating Java interfaces to
>> represent the grammar's various rules, as well as basic
>> implementations of these, which I expect will accumulate "tokens"
>> extracted from method arguments specified in fluent fashion.  In fact,
>> spelling it out here makes it sound as though it might be just as
>> reasonable for the end result of a series of calls upon the
>> implementation of this EDSL interface to create a (parse?) tree, which
>> could then be walked to resolve the final result of such a series of
>> method invocations.  This would have the benefit that such a tree
>> walker (parse, AST, what-have-you) would be equally applicable to a
>> tree generated from a "normal" ANTLR-generated Java Parser
>> implementation.
>>
>> Is that more clear?
>>
>> Thanks for your interest,
>> Matt
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Eric <researcher0x00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Ok, I'm curious as to what you are trying to do. It sounds like
>> > something I
>> > once tinkered with but since I did not understand your exact goal I
>> > could be
>> > totally wrong.
>> >
>> > The only part that I understood as part of the goal was "generation of
>> > Java
>> > interfaces from EBNF-style grammars". Are you trying to generate Java
>> > interfaces from a grammar for other languages or interface languages
>> > such as
>> > C++, CORBA, etc.?
>> >
>> > Eric
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Matt Benson <gudnabrsam at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi all,
>> >>  In the Java ecosystem embedded DSLs have become increasingly popular
>> >> over the past several years.  In my opinion the primary drawback to
>> >> these is the painful task of their creation.  For this reason I want
>> >> to experiment with the generation of Java interfaces from EBNF-style
>> >> grammars to see what I can accomplish, in true Dr. Terence Parr "why
>> >> program by hand in 5 days..." fashion.  I have explored, for example,
>> >> xtext, but the process of going from its meta-grammar to EDSL code is
>> >> non-obvious.  I'm open to other suggestions if anyone has any, but in
>> >> the meantime I'm looking at ANTLR 4 and/or 3-based approaches.  It
>> >> would seem most appropriate to use the ANTLR 4 meta-grammar, from
>> >> which point I would seem to have the following options:
>> >>
>> >> * Implement a custom code generation target for ANTLR 4
>> >> * Use ANTLRMorph with the ANTLR 3-based ANTLR 4 meta-grammar
>> >>
>> >> It might well be the case that these differ only in the manner in
>> >> which the output stringtemplates are provided.  Does anyone have any
>> >> opinions on which approach is to be preferred?  Failing that, I am
>> >> willing to entertain aspersions cast on, or less likely, advocations
>> >> in favor of, my sanity in conceiving this endeavor.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks in advance for any input,
>> >> Matt
>> >>
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>>
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