Now it's getting even better.
Today we release Xtext 2.1, which comes with surprisingly easy to use support for defining little languages targeting the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). You only need to define two files:
- the grammar
- a mapping to Java concepts
The second script is the big deal: it allows you to map your language concepts to any number of Java types, fields and methods. By doing that you implicitly tell the framework what it needs to know to provide you with a fully working IDE including an incremental compiler!
We have written a nice little tutorial explaining the five steps needed to get a language like the following:
import java.util.List
package my.model {
entity Person {
name: String
firstName: String
friends: List<Person>
address : Address
op getFullName() : String {
return firstName + " " + name;
}
op getFriendsSortedByFullName() : List<Person> {
return friends.sortBy( f | f.fullName);
}
}
entity Address {
street: String
zip: String
city: String
}
}
As you can see, it supports all kinds of advanced features such as Java generics and full expressions even including closures. But you not only get a working parser, linker and compiler but a fully-working high-end Eclipse plug-in on top! The screencast demos the resulting language and IDE and briefly shows how that can be built. Be creative and have fun!
