XDoclet

If you're looking for documentation for the latest release, it can be found here.

Description

XDoclet is an extended Javadoc Doclet engine. It's a generic Java tool that lets you create custom Javadoc @tags and based on those @tags generate source code or other files (such as xml-ish deployment descriptors) using a template engine it provides. XDoclet supports a set of common standard tasks such as web.xml or ejb-jar.xml generation, users and contributors can create other templates and @tags and add support for other technologies also.

The broader goal is to let you apply "Continuous Integration" in component-oriented development. The point is that you program your component and specify its meta-data in a per component fashion, you set the deployment meta-data per component. You don't have to worry about outdating deployment meta-data whenever you touch the code. The deployment meta-data is continuously integrated. And the whole process is, in its nature, round-trip. We call it "Continuous Reconfiguration". XDoclet is meant to be used as part of the build process utilizing Apache-Ant.

The system is extensible. If desired, you can write a specific template for your specific task (supporting a new application server, defining the OR schema for a tool like TopLink for example, or even supporting Servlets as components!). Some pre-built @tags and templates are already supported by XDoclet, for example <ejbdoclet/> for EJB-related stuff, <webdoclet/> for web.xml deployment descriptor generation and so on.

XDoclet is based on these parts:

• The Apache Ant task: <ejbdoclet/> and <webdoclet/> are examples of such tasks. In your build.xml file, define it before the target that compiles the code.
• The nested elements to the task element: This is where you specify exactly which sub-tasks are performed over your source codes. Examples are <remoteinterface/> and <jsptaglib/>. Each sub-task is separately configurable.
• The template files: Sub-tasks generate output based on template files. Template may be any text file with some XML-ish <XDoclet:blabla/> elements in it. Templates are like JSP files, <XDoclet:XYZ/> are like JSP tags, the actual implementation is in sub-task classes and a base class where the common tags are defined.
• The special JavaDoc @tags: using some special JavaDoc @tags, settings are defined for each component. For example putting a @web:servlet name="The Simple Servlet" in SimpleServlet.java lets the <deploymentdescriptor/> sub-task know that SimpleServlet.java contains a servlet definition, so it can generate the corresponding web.xml deployment descriptor based on the information provided by @web:servlet tag.
• The merge system: To avoid lots of silly tags, XDoclet also lets you utilize a merge system. For example instead of putting @jboss:table-name account in your EJBean source code, you can define a jaws-db-settings-Account.xml file where the content is the actual XML that <jboss/> sub-task will merge into the generated jaws.xml file.

For concrete examples, please refer to the sample codes and sample build.xml file.

XDoclet is the successor to EJBDoclet, a project that Rickard Öberg, one of the best programmers of the world and an Open Source pioneer, started. Then, during its development, EJBDoclet reached the stage that it was no longer only for EJBs. So a new project was created with a broader goal in mind.

You can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xdoclet.