Monday 14 April 2014

Building parsers for the web with JavaCC & GWT (Part one)

Introduction

This blog (and its sequel) describe how to leverage new features of JavaCC so that Java can be used to create parsers that can run inside a modern browser.

Executing parsers on the client side versus on the server side can lead to better responsiveness, lower network utilization, and using JavaCC as the parser generation engine with Java as the runtime engine allows developers to leverage all the benefits of statically typed language and enterprise tooling that they know and love whilst exploring the exciting world of domain specific languages.


The Split

The first part of this tutorial (spread over two posts) deals with creating a simple GWT compatible parser module using Eclipse. It requires JavaCC 6.1 or above, which is currently in the release candidate phase (at time of writing).

The second part of this tutorial deals with setting up a GWT project that will import the GWT module that we create in this first part of the tutorial.

These blogs are very IDE and screenshot-centric, and if this becomes tiresome, simply jump to github for sample code. This tutorial does not deal in the complexities of using JavaCC grammar definitions itself and uses a trivial grammar for the purposes of this tutorial.




JavaCC's "modern" mode

JavaCC 6.1 introduces "modern" mode, which requires an opt-in option setting (for purposes of backwards compatibility).

Modern mode only apples when JavaCC is generating Java code (JavaCC also has C++ code generation options) and what this means is generating cleaner Java code with a number of enhancement versus compatibility (the default) mode.

Here is a rough summary of the benefits:
  • Improved code generation.with significantly less warnings.
  • Ability to share boilerplate code between different parsers in the same codebase (use the GENERATE_BOILERPLATE = false; option).
  • Loose coupling of parser IO through an introduced interface called Provider". This allows parsers to be executed in client-side GWT/Android/Sharpen (experimental) amongst other use-cases.
  • Better exception handling (no more java.lang.Error objects being thrown and force-closing server VMs).
  • Generation of an additional (small) String based constructor for all parsers by default.
Part One

Step 1 - Obtain Required Plugins And File

  • Download the following JavaCC Eclipse plugin and install using the instructions on the website : http://eclipse-javacc.sourceforge.net/
  • Follow the instructions on the GWT plugin for Eclipse page. (This is not required for part one of the tutorial but will be required for part two).
  • Download JavaCC 6.1+ (currently a release candidate) from the following location.

Step 2 - Create and setup an Eclipse project for the parser

Step 2.1 - Create a new Java Project




Step 2.2 - Within the new project, create a package named 'parse'.

Step 2.3 - Right click on the project, and go to "Properties"


Step 2.4 - Select the "JavaCC Options" list item on the left, then click "Browse" next to the "Set the JavaCC jar file" row (as shown in the screenshot). When the file dialog appears set the JavaCC jar to a JavaCC 6.1.0+ JavaCC jarfile (available here). This is essential otherwise JavaCC will not generate GWT compatible code.

(before)

(after)


Step 3 - Create the parser definition and generate the parser

Step 3.1 - Within the parse folder, create a new file called 'example1.jj'.



Step 3.2 - Put the following contents into the generated file (gist here), then save.


** This is a trivial parser that accepts any combination of the words "one" "two" and "three", ignoring whitespace characters such as spaces, tables, line feeds and carriage returns. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will not be building an AST (hence the return type of void).

*** The critical line here is JAVA_TEMPLATE_TYPE = "modern";, this enables GWT compatible code generation and if omitted will revert to JavaCC's legacy code generation (the default may be changed in future JavaCC code releases).


Step 3.3 - Compile the JavaCC parser by right clicking on the .jj file and selecting "Compile with JavaCC" (this will use the JavaCC jar file in the per-project settings configured in step 2.4). If not compile the .jj file via the Eclipse plugin then examine  the JavaCC command line options for an alternative method of code generation.





(The generated files)








(The Provider Interface is new to JavaCC 6.1, and is required for GWT compatibility)



Step 4 - Build an (optional) bootstrap class with which to test the parser

Step 4.1 - Now create a class called "Example1", this will contain a basic entry point to test our parser.



(A simple bootstrap example class)




Step 5 - Adding in the GWT Module Descriptor


Step 5.1 - Create a new folder named "resources" underneath the "Example1" project. Those who use Maven project layouts can use "src/main'java" and "src/main/resources" as their root source paths, but for this example, we will simply create a folder called "resources" parallel to the existing "src" folder underneath the project.

(Creating the folder. Right click "Example1" project, then select "Folder".)




(The New Folder Dialog)



(Now add the new folder to the build path)




Step 5.2 - Create GWT Module file "Example1.gwt.xml". Right click on the Example1 project in eclipse and go to the "New" menu, then select "File" from the submenu.




Step 5.3 - Add the following body to the module file (can be copied and pasted from here). The first two inherits are standard for GWT, the important line is the line containing the "" tag. This corresponds to a package underneath the package in which the module file resides (although in the parallel src tree). Parsers that use an AST or utility classes will likely have multiple packages to list here (such as "model" or "ast" or "utils"), each additional item requires its own separate "" tag.






Step 6 - Building the GWT Module jarfile

This step uses Eclipse to export the a jarfile, but you can also use Ant, Maven, Gradle or any other tool to package the GWT module.

The three requirement of a valid GWT module library are:
  1. Create a valid YOURNAME.gwt.xml file at the package level ABOVE the parse package, preferably in a separate "resources" source tree that mirrors the package layout in your main Java source path.
  2. Only use classes that are emulated (translatable into JavaScript) by GWT. A list of emulated classes can be found here. If the use of an unemulated class is unavoidable there are workarounds which I will cover in another blog.
  3. Make sure that the Java source-code is packaged alongside the classes. This is required as the GWT compiler will recompile the Java source into JavaScript - but it requires the original source for this.
Step 6.1 - Right click the "Example" project and select "Export".



Step 6.2 - Select "JAR file"




Step 6.3 - Make sure "src" and "resources" are selected (only), and make sure "Export Java Source files and resources" is selected. Browse to a suitable JAR file location in the "Select the export destination" section.



Step 6.4 - Select the options as shown below then click "Next" (the "Save the description of this JAR in the workspace" check box is optional).



Step 6.5 - Click "Finish".





Step 6.6 - Observe the created jarfile (in this case, 38 Kilobytes).




(The jarfile contains Example1.gwt.xml and also the original Java source files)





End of Part One

As of the end of this tutorial, we have set up an example project, and created a basic GWT compatible parser module.

In the part 2, we will wire up our parser to a GWT based UI project.

Further Resources

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