XALPI

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on an application, using the XEO Framework, for a while now and there were two situations that I wanted to improve. First it was my inability to write unit tests for my application’s logic (using JUnit, for example) and the other was I had trouble finding which attributes were being used where and overall can’t rely on the compiler to help me out. XEO’s API is very flexible and all but I thought that in order to address these two issues I would have to come up with something on my own.

Notice: This work is not associated with the XEO Framework, although I do work at ITDS (which creates the framework), XALPI does not reflect anything but my own opinion and effort on the subject.

Meet XALPI! (beta)

XALPI stands for XEO ALternative API and is a personal attempt to create a more convenient (for me) API and allow the creation of unit tests. It’s an open source project that you can find on Bitbucket, licensed under the BSD license (rev3), meaning you can do just about anything with it.

You can download it here (see the instructions at the wiki page).

So, what makes XALPI different from XEO’s original API?

• Provides an interface representing each XEOModel with getters and setters for each attribute (see example bellow)
• Set iFile values using java.io.File instances
• Get/Set Lov Values using a class instance (good for searching references) instead of the value itself
• The description of each attribute/model is placed as javadoc in the generated interfaces / classes
• Provides an easy API to create lists of objects and iterate a list
• Provides a new Logger abstraction to allow creating application logic to be tested without needing the XEO Logger (which throws a bunch of errors to the error console when the server is not up and running)
• Reduces the number of boRuntimeExceptions thrown by the API (only update/destroy throw exceptions)

Each of these situations is (I hope) well explained at the wiki. Although some information may still be missing ( it’s beta after all ) I will, to the best of my abilities, complete it as fast as I can.

An example? Compare the following code (current API) :

public void createHistory(EboContext ctx, BigDecimal patientBoui) throws boRuntimeException {
		Timestamp time = DateUtils.getTodayDateAsTimeStamp();
		long boui = patientBoui.longValue();
        boObjectListBuilder builder = new boObjectListBuilder(ctx, "select FileHistory where user = CTX_PERFORMER_BOUI and file = ? and dateOpen = ?").argsList(boui,time).cache(false);
		boObjectList list = builder.build();
		if (list.getRecordCount() == 0){

			if (logger.isFineEnabled()){
				logger.fine("Created fileHistory for " + patientBoui.longValue());
			}

			boObject historyEntry = boApplication.getDefaultApplication().getObjectManager().createObject(ctx, FileHistory.MODEL_NAME);
			historyEntry.getAttribute(FileHistory.USER).setValueLong(ctx.getBoSession().getPerformerBoui());
			historyEntry.getAttribute(FileHistory.FILE).setValueLong(boui);
			historyEntry.getAttribute(FileHistory.DATE_OPEN).setValueDate(DateUtils.getTodayDate());
			historyEntry.update();
	    } 
	}

With this (XALPI) :

public void createHistory(Patient fileOpened, BaseModel user) throws boRuntimeException{

		Timestamp time = DateUtils.getTodayDateAsTimeStamp();
		FileHistoryList history = Select.FileHistory().where("user = CTX_PERFORMER_BOUI and file = ? and dateOpen = ?").args(fileOpened,time).build();

		if (history.isEmpty()){

			logger.fine("Created fileHitroy for %s",user.getBoui());

			FileHistory history = FileHistoryManager.create();

			history.setDateOpen(DateUtils.getTodayDate());
			history.setFile(fileOpened);
			history.setUser(user);
			history.update();
		}

	}

Check out the rest at the wiki page and tell me if you like it. I’m open to suggestions and improvements

Happy coding!