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TOM.Java - Now with Generics Support

What kept me busy lately (apart from my insane work load)? Adding 'generics' support to the TOM.Java API.

I was blogging a few weeks ago about a pet project of mine -- the Java Mediator for SDL Tridion Templating. In that post I was very enthusiastic about JNI4NET bridge between Java and .NET and namely about ProxyGen -- the tool that actually generates both Java and C# proxy classes. For what it is, ProxyGen is a great tool, but it's really a Java 1.4 tool -- namely, it does not support generics. Luckily, it is open source, so anybody can modify it...

However, the problem for me was my own learning curve. ProxyGen is in fact a code generator written in C# using CodeDom, which builds a class model (from JARs and DLLs) using reflection, and finally generates C# and Java code from this model.

I won't go into the ProxyGen details here (if you want more details, I posted more details on jni4net Google group).

Anyway, with this (partial) support for generics in TOM.Java, I am able to use Java counterparts for the main generic collections from C# (and the other way around for that matter - from Java collections to C# collections). The following type mappings are available:

Java
C#
java.util.List<E>System.Collections.Generic.IList<T>
java.util.Map<K, V>System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary<K, V>
java.util.Set<E>System.Collections.Generic.ISet<T>
java.util.Collection<E>System.Collections.Generic.ICollection<T>
java.lang.Iterable<E>System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T>

The methods using generics delegate their calls to the non-generic native counterparts (as originally designed by ProxyGen). What I did was basically deal with the conversion from generic to non-generic and back. The delegate methods are suffixed with the name of the Java collection they are a generic for.

Example: Package.GetEntries() returns a C# IList of KeyValuePairs of string and Item objects.
Original signature:

IList<KeyValuePair<string, Item>> GetEntries()

ProxyGen generates a Java native proxy method with signature:

public native system.collections.IList GetEntries()

If I were to use this method I would have to use the IEnumerator iterator like this (and that does not support Java for-each loops):

for (IEnumerator enumerator = _package.GetEntries().GetEnumerator(); enumerator.MoveNext();) {
    @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
    KeyValuePair kvp = (KeyValuePair) enumerator.getCurrent();
    system.String key = (system.String) kvp.getKey();
    Item value = (Item) kvp.getValue();
    System.out.println(String.format("\tKey: %s\tValue: %s", key, value.GetAsString()));
}

Next to this, my enhancement to ProxyGen now generates a delegate that accepts generics

java.util.List<mitza.jni4net.wrapper.KeyValuePair<system.String, tridion.contentmanager.templating.Item>> GetEntriesList()

So the loop-above can be rewritten Java-style with for-each:

for (KeyValuePair<system.String, Item> kvp : _package.GetEntriesList()) {
    System.out.println(
        String.format("Key: %s Value: %s", kvp.getKey(), kvp.getValue().GetAsString()));
}

Other examples:

for (ComponentPresentation cp : page.getComponentPresentationsList()) {
    Component component = cp.getComponent();
    ComponentTemplate componentTemplate = cp.getComponentTemplate();
    System.out.println(String.format("CP: Component: '%s' %s + Component Template: '%s' %s",
        component.getTitle(), component.getId(), componentTemplate.getTitle(), componentTemplate.getId()));
}

for (VersionedItem item : page.GetVersionsIterable()) {
    System.out.println(String.format("Version: %s User: %s Date: %s",
        item.getVersion(), item.getRevisor().getTitle(), item.getRevisionDate()));
}


Comments

Unknown said…
A great job. Could you upload your modified proxygen.exe with partial support Generics ? i want to try it on my dll. tks you
Mihai Cădariu said…
They are available at http://jni4net.googlecode.com/svn/branches/0-8-generics/distributable/
Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said…
Hello, it's done with proxygen to generate many proxies file for jvm and clr folder. But the building after that does not work. As the proxygen generates many wrongs name file javas such as abc`1.java, etc.. and many errors in .cs files suchs as @__DiscreteMembershipFunction<>, etc.. Can you help me to fix it ?
Unknown said…
This comment has been removed by the author.

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