Sign In Start Free Trial
Account

Add to playlist

Create a Playlist

Modal Close icon
You need to login to use this feature.
  • Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition
  • Toc
  • feedback
Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

By : Dearle
4.7 (3)
close
Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

Groovy for Domain-Specific Languages, Second Edition

4.7 (3)
By: Dearle

Overview of this book

The times when developing on the JVM meant you were a Java programmer have long passed. The JVM is now firmly established as a polyglot development environment with many projects opting for alternative development languages to Java such as Groovy, Scala, Clojure, and JRuby. In this pantheon of development languages, Groovy stands out for its excellent DSL enabling features which allows it to be manipulated to produce mini languages that are tailored to a project’s needs. A comprehensive tutorial on designing and developing mini Groovy based Domain Specific Languages, this book will guide you through the development of several mini DSLs that will help you gain all the skills needed to develop your own Groovy based DSLs with confidence and ease. Starting with the bare basics, this book will focus on how Groovy can be used to construct domain specific mini languages, and will go through the more complex meta-programming features of Groovy, including using the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST). Practical examples are used throughout this book to de-mystify these seemingly complex language features and to show how they can be used to create simple and elegant DSLs. Packed with examples, including several fully worked DSLs, this book will serve as a springboard for developing your own DSLs.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
close
Free Chapter
1
1. Introduction to DSLs and Groovy
13
Index

BuilderSupport

Under the hood, all of Groovy's own Builders are implemented using the invokeMethod or methodMissing methods and delegate techniques that we have described in the previous section. We can choose to start creating our own builder classes by using these features alone. Perhaps the biggest challenge when creating a builder with these features alone is that the MOP concepts of pretended methods and delegate handling don't fit well with the task at hand—namely, the construction of complex objects. It would be nice to have APIs that reflected the task at hand in a better way.

Thankfully, the complexities of managing invokeMethod or methodMissing calls and figuring out who the delegate should be, are encapsulated into the builder support classes provided in the Groovy packages. The most basic support class is groovy.util.BuilderSupport.

BuilderSupport hook methods

BuilderSupport provides an interface to the building process that nicely mirrors the node-based construction...

Unlock full access

Continue reading for free

A Packt free trial gives you instant online access to our library of over 7000 practical eBooks and videos, constantly updated with the latest in tech
bookmark search playlist font-size

Change the font size

margin-width

Change margin width

day-mode

Change background colour

Close icon Search
Country selected

Close icon Your notes and bookmarks

Delete Bookmark

Modal Close icon
Are you sure you want to delete it?
Cancel
Yes, Delete