EMF GenModel Annotations

A cheatsheet for EMF annotations which influence the code generation of GenModels.

The “Gen” pattern

Although it has nothing to do with annotations, it is a powerful instrument during the generation process.

A method name can be suffixed with Gen and by that “moved out of the way,” but still have it generated.

Assume you have a method generated, called init. You can rename the method to “initGen” and keep (!!) the @generated marker. This will let the generation tools still generate the method init but as initGen. The method init is missing then and has to be provided manually. But from this method you can call initGen and, to some degree, influence what happens.

See below for an example.

http://www.eclipse.org/emf/2002/GenModel

Common

Name	Description
documentation	The documentation for this model element
copyright	Copyright information for this model element

Feature

Name	Description
get	The code of the getter method.
suppressedGetVisibility	“true” or “false”. Suppres the creation of the getter for this feature.
suppressedSetVisibility	“true” or “false”. Suppress the creation of the setter for this feature.
suppressedIsSetVisibility	“true” or “false”. Suppress the creation of the isSet method for this feature.
suppressedUnsetVisibility	“true” or “false”. Suppress the creation of the unset method for this feature.

Operation

Name	Description
body	The body contents used when generating the method for the operation.

DataType

Name	Description
create	The body of the creator method.
convert	The body of the convertor method.

http://www.eclipse.org/emf/2002/Ecore

All

Name	Description
constraints	A whitespace delimited list of constraints.The constraint expression is then fetched from an annotation of the same model element. All validation delegates (URIs) are tried to load as annotation URI with the constraint name as value. So for example if a model element has “constraints=test1 test2” and the package has the “validationDelegates” value set to “urn:delegate1” then the annotation urn:delegate1#test1 and urn:delegate1#test2 will be loaded. If there is no expression present it will create a dummy method in the Validator class with must be implemented by the user. And marked with “@genenreated NOT”.

Name

Description

constraints

A whitespace delimited list of constraints.The constraint expression is then fetched from an annotation of the same model element. All validation delegates (URIs) are tried to load as annotation URI with the constraint name as value. So for example if a model element has “constraints=test1 test2” and the package has the “validationDelegates” value set to “urn:delegate1” then the annotation urn:delegate1#test1 and urn:delegate1#test2 will be loaded. If there is no expression present it will create a dummy method in the Validator class with must be implemented by the user. And marked with “@genenreated NOT”.

Package

Name	Description
validationDelegates	A whitespace separated list of validation delegate URIs.e.g. “urn:deletegate1 urn:delegate2”

Examples

A “Gen” pattern example

/**
 * @generated  
 */
public static CommonPackage initGen() {
  if (isInited) {  
    return (CommonPackage)EPackage.Registry.INSTANCE.getEPackage ( CommonPackage.eNS\_URI );  
  }

 final CommonPackageImpl theCommonPackage = (CommonPackageImpl) ( EPackage.Registry.INSTANCE.get ( eNS\_URI ) instanceof CommonPackageImpl ? EPackage.Registry.INSTANCE.get ( eNS\_URI ) : new CommonPackageImpl () );

  isInited = true;  
  WorldPackage.eINSTANCE.eClass ();  
  theCommonPackage.createPackageContents ();  
  theCommonPackage.initializePackageContents ();  
  theCommonPackage.freeze ();

  EPackage.Registry.INSTANCE.put ( CommonPackage.eNS_URI, theCommonPackage );  
  return theCommonPackage;  
}

public static CommonPackage init() {  
  final CommonPackage result = initGen();  
  EValidator.Registry.INSTANCE.put (result, new ExtensibleValidationDescriptor());  
  return result;  
}