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Hello world

This page contains a simple hello world example to get familiar with using CrossGenerate. The example illustrates how CrossGenerate combines information from a model and a template to generate output. The desired output is a text file that contains the text 'hello world'.

The files shown in this example can be downloaded here. You need to download CrossGenerate to run the example on your computer.

To use CrossGenerate we use the following set of files:

  • Model: An XML file that contains the model information
  • Template: A template file, in this example a simple text file
  • Config: An XML file that contains a generation configuration for CrossGenerate
  • Application config: An XML file that contains the application configuration for CrossGenerate
  • Run file: A cmd file that is used to run CrossGenerate with the appropriate parameters

Model

For this example the model file is the XML file shown below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<example message="hello world" />

Template

The template is a simple textfile that contains the following text

ExamplePlaceholder_message

Config

The configuration file contains the information that CrossGenerate needs to combine the model and the template to the desired output. In the file a for the text template the root section is named ExampleSection. This means ExampleSection refers to the entire template. The <SectionModelBinding> entry in the config file bindes the section, being the entire template, to the example element of the model. ExamplePlaceholder is set as placeholder for this section model binding. With this configuration, CrossGenerate will replace ExamplePlaceholder_message in the template with the contents of the message attribute in the model, being hello world.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<XGenConfig>

  <!-- Generate using a text template, where the root section is called 'ExampleSection'.  -->
  <TextTemplate rootSectionName="ExampleSection">
    <!-- Specify the placeholder part for accessing an attribute of the mapped model element. -->
    <FileFormat currentAccessor="_" />
    <!-- We want all output to be written to a single file. -->
    <Output type="single_output" />
  </TextTemplate>

  <Binding>
    <!-- Map the section 'ExampleSection' of the template on the 'example' element of the model and scan the section in the template for the 'ExamplePlacerholder'. -->
        <SectionModelBinding section="ExampleSection" modelXPath="example" placeholderName= "ExamplePlaceholder" />
  </Binding>

</XGenConfig>

Application config

The application config contains the file locations that CrossGenerate uses for the input (model, config and template) and output files

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<XGenAppConfig>
  <App>
    <ConfigFolder>..\Config</ConfigFolder>
    <ModelFolder>..\Model</ModelFolder>
    <OutputFolder>..\Output</OutputFolder>
    <TemplateFolder>..\Templates</TemplateFolder>
  </App>
</XGenAppConfig>

Run file

A command file is used to invoke CrossGenerate with the appropriate parameters. In the command file variable xgenerate is used to refer to the location where the CrossGenerate jar file is located. The invocation uses the following parameters:

  • config: The application configuration file that is used
  • mtc: Combination of model, template and config file that are to be used
  • cll: Console log level

See the Application section for an explanation of all commandline arguments.

@echo off
REM Configure the CrossGenerate java execute command.
set xgenerate=java -jar ..\..\jar\XGenerate.jar

REM If the output folder doesn't exist, create it.
set OutputFolder=..\Output
if not exist "%OutputFolder%" mkdir "%OutputFolder%"

REM Start generate using the following options:
REM  -config > Point to where the CrossGenerate application configuration be found.
REM  -mtc {model-file}::{template-file}::{config-file} > Specify the model, template and config file to use for generating.
REM  -cll INFO > Set the console log level to INFO so we get information about the generation on the console.
%xgenerate% ^
 -config .\XGenAppCfg.xml ^
 -mtc model.xml::example.txt::config.xml ^
 -cll INFO

REM Pause the command, so one can read the output before the terminal is closed.
pause

Output

When running CrossGenerate for this example, the output folder contains a file called example.txt which contains the output illustrated below 

hello world

Summary

This example shows how CrossGenerate can be used to generate output using a model and a template. Various aspects are illustrated in the other examples in this section, such as working with models that have more data, filtering data before adding it to a template, working with XML templates and apply pre-processing on model or template.

Download

The files shown in this example can be downloaded here.