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by Warner Onstine.
Original Post: Magma
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After delaying this for a while I have finally dug in and started writing Magma - a PHP code generation tool. Basically what I decided on architectural-wise is to mimic what Torque does. So, I started with an xml file which defines a schema and then I will generate some classes that allow me to retrieve, populate and save objects to the database.
So, after deciding on a path I started looking at the tools out there to help me do it. Torque uses Texen to help it generate the myriad of files (Java and SQL) that it uses. Now, DVSL is newer and seems to be more on the track for what I wanted to do.
I decided to ask the Velocity users which one they prefer and got very little feedback on either of these tools initially (I don't think anyone is really using Texen, except for the Torque developers). Then Pete Kazmier came along and suggested something that I honestly hadn't thought of - using Jelly along with the Velocity Tag that he helped develop for it. The more I looked at it the more it seemed to be what I wanted. I could use Jelly to control the flow of my generation as well as pull stuff from multiple sources (instead of just one xml file).
So far, I like Jelly and the way it works with Velocity is nice. The way the taglib is written the Velocity context gets seeded with the variables that are defined inside the Jelly file. This provides for some nice glue between the two. After a few minor bumps in the road I am making some good progress. One of the things that I haven't liked is the fact that Jelly needs some tutorials, not a lot, but at least 2 or 3 illustrating how to do different things. The biggest plus of Jelly is the ability to use Ant tags plus the myriad of other tags that come with it. If there were some concrete examples which explain exactly what is going on it would help strengthen the adoption of Jelly.
Once I get things more in hand I will publish these and see if the Jelly people want them for the site.
Current progress
Basic class code generation - done
OM generation, allow selection of object from db and saving of object in db - in progress
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