RE: How to achieve java format on generated code using

[Mikael Petterson]

> I am using xsl/xslt to generate java code. The problem I have 
> is to make the output more readable.

Visual formatting of text output can be hard, all right, depending on
what you want to do.

> Here is part of the code that I generate:
> 
> public void actionTcp (Coordinator c) throws Exception,
>  HwException,
>  SwException,
>  FailoverException;
> 
> I would rather see something like:
> 
> public void actionStartTpcInsertion(Coordinator c) throws Exception,
>                                                               
>                     HwException,
>                                                               
>                     SwException,
>                                                               
>                     FailoverException;
> 
> ( If it does not show up in the mail, I mean all Execptions 
> below each other in a straight line.)
> 
> How can I make sure that they begin under Exception and in a 
> straight line?
> 

First you have to figure out just what you want to do in terms of
characters in the output, because xslt does not know about anything more
advanced about output characteristics.  There are many ways - mostly
awkward, like recursive templates - to create stringlets for formatting,
but in this particular example, I think it could be done more easily.

You want to insert a string composed of blanks in front of each text
fragment. You can get one this way (this may get a bit distorted by
wordwrapping in your email reader)-

<xsl:variable name='padding' 
     select='translate(" public void actionTcp (Coordinator c) throws",
"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ",
"
"'/>

Make sure that there is one space in the replacement string for each
character in the alphabet string (you could add numbers and other
characters if you need them).  Then you just concatenate $padding and
the string fragment you need to pad.

You can make the padding string by calling a template, passing the
string to used as a parameter.  That way, you would not have to keep
coding the padding strings by hand.

>  Does anyone of you ( somewhere out there......) have any experience
with code generation?

I have generated python, SQL table definitions, and lots of javascript.

Cheers,

Tom P

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