New Open-Source Component Generator

Many months back, I wrote a post showing you how to create your own code generator using XSL stylesheets and the admin API for database introspection. There were a couple of issues with it: 1) the generated code sucked (hey, I was very new to the OO stuff) 2) it wasn't very extensible as everything was handled through a single template. Since then, I have had the opportunity to update the generator and am finally releasing it as the Illudium PU-36 Code Generator (any Looney Tunes fans out there?) as a new open-source project under an Apache 2.0 license. You can download the code via the Subversion repository by going here (note: I plan to have a project page on this site soon). Keep in mind, this is alpha software, so there are likely bugs in there.So what has changed since my original post? Quite a bit. First, I think the generated code is much cleaner and more practical. By default, it includes templates for your bean, DAO, gateway, service, transfer object and even ColdSpring XML. For items like the bean, DOA, gateway and service that contain a number of methods, I have split out the stylesheets by function to make it far easier to modify them. You can also easily add your own methods - the idea here is that you will customize your templates to suit your needs. You can also easily add entirely new templates; for instance if you wanted to generate a basic form html based on the table metadata. (p.s. if anybody does any of this, feel free to share it so it could be considered for inclusion with the project).

Another feature is that you can override the templates on a per DSN basis. So, if you would like your projectx DSN to use a customized set of stylesheets, you just place those stylesheets in a specified project folder and those will be used by default (see the readme.txt for more details).

However, if you just want to use the built in stylesheets and start generating some of the gruntwork of your daily programming, all you need to do is place the folders somewhere on your web root, set your ColdFusion administrator password in the config and that's it.

So, as you may have guessed, since it uses the admin API, it requires ColdFusion MX 7 - (my original code used the undocumented serviceFactory, but I didn't like the idea of relying on an undocumented feature, but you should be able to update it if necessary as this is used simply to pull a list of DSNs). It is also built using Mach-II, so you will need that as well. Lastly, it is currently set up to work with MySQL 5 (it should work on 4.1 but I haven't tested it) and MSSQL 200 0 (again, should work with 2005 but not tested).

Again, keep in mind this is alpha software and I am still testing it - so feel free to email me if you enounter an issue. I am also happy to entertain ideas on how I can improve the generated code (or any additions to the templates that you may have). And if this saves you hours of work, you can simply send me a thanks :)

Download the project at: http://code.google.com/p/cfcgenerator/source

Question - by admin password you mean the one used for CF Admin, right? Or for CF RDS? Tried both - dsn picklist isn't populated.

I have mysql DSNs. Running Mysql 5.0.17-max. I'm just seeing an empty list.

I'm not sure the Open-Source list man should be contributing also. Now I'll think the list is biased. :)

Very nice. I put in my CF Admin password and my list of DSNs came up no problem (Win XP, MS SQL 2000). The default templates look pretty in line with how I do things. But I love that you made them customizable.

One specific thing I do slightly different is my Service layer search function (GetTableNames - plural) does not list all of the fields individually. It accepts a structure. Passing the form structure to the service works well. As does passing all event arguments from MachII or Model Glue. This way if I add or change a field name, I only have to make changes in the DAO and Gateway.

So I guess the next step would be to write MG Controllers or MachII Listeners. Then the event handlers. Then... can you say scaffolds?

Just made one minor edit. In the various templates, I wasn't getting returns between the functions. So the end of the start of the DAO Read function started immediately after the create function like so..
</cffunction> <cffunction name="read"

I made an edit it XSLService.cfc to add 2 returns on line 58:
<cfset innerXSL = innerXSL & CHR(13) & CHR(13) & tmpXSL />

FYI: As I work on a project this morning, I'm already putting it to use! Of course this means you'll have to get yourself an Amazon wish list. Or just post your iTunes ID so we can get you gift certs.

Thank you, Brian - I love it! It just *works*!

Brian,

This is just what I was looking for. I am planning to write a scaffolding lexicon for Fusebox 5 and reading your code has shown me how to do it.

Kevin

Has anyone gotten this to work with MSSQL 2005?

I will run it again when I get home tonight then post it in the bug tracker.

Here is what I recall though. Initially when I setup MSSQL 2005 as a datasource I used MS's driver, so it never shows up "Add New Data Source > Driver" drop down within the CF Admin menu. Another result is those datasources would not show up in Illudium's drop down. So what I did is I setup a test datasource using CF's Microsoft SQL Server driver. At this point Illudium's drop down then showed the test datasource but when I tried to run against it, it would error out with missing some stored procedure.

I was wondering what it would take to port the code over to work with Oracle as well. Hoping to get time this week to look at the code and see what that might take.

Sorry for the delay, had some CF Server issues on my dev box that I had to resolve first.

This is the error I am getting:

[Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]Invalid object name 'master.dbo.spt_datatype_info'.

I just did a quick test and that seems to have fixed the 2005 issues. After glancing at the DB specific CFCs I think I could easily get an Oracle one made. If/when I get the time to get to it, I will send the file to you.

Brian,
I really love the code generator. Most of all it is very easy to use and customize. Everyone breaks down components in their applications differently so I was wondering if you have an example app of using the generated cfcs. Just a small application that incorporates the generated cfc's and coldspring. It may help me to uderstand the usage for all of the different cfcs. Thanks!!!

I'm trying to populate a ComboBox in Flex with a list of DSNs, like you have in your app, using the cfide.adminapi.datasource api. I get an error saying that the cfc cannot be accesses remotely. I'm using remote object to get the data. I downloaded your code, but the mxml code is not part of the download. Would it be possible for you to show what needs to be done in mxml to populate the ComboBox. Thanks.