Looks like it is a bug on this version, as more people reported here.

You may try providing all parameters. Here are some examples:

tell application "Quicksilver"
	show notification "QS Notification" text "QS text" image name "Quicksilver.icns" image data read (path to resource "Quicksilver.icns") as picture
	show notification "Yes Notification" text "Yes text" image name "BooleanYES.png" image data read (path to resource "BooleanYES.png") as picture
	show notification "No Notification" text "No text" image name "BooleanNO.png" image data read (path to resource "BooleanNO.png") as picture
	show notification "Toggle Notification" text "Toggle text" image name "BooleanTOGGLE.png" image data read (path to resource "BooleanTOGGLE.png") as picture
	show notification "App icon" text "App icon text" image name "com.apple.safari" image data read (path to resource "Quicksilver.icns") as picture
end tell

Now it should work. Note that the displayed image will be defined by the image name, not the image data, which seems to be just ignored.

code2code lets you create your own generators using template engines. In this example we’ll use the plugin to generate an entire crud for us, using a generator I’ve made.

Note that the code was made simple, to show the capabilities of the plugin, and not of the frameworks involved.

Creating and setting up the Project

First, let’s create a new Dynamic Web Project and call it “products”.

Now wee need to install VRaptor2, Hibernate 3, HSQLDB, configure each frameworks and…
But wait! Let’s use a generator for all that too! But before, we need to install the plugin and the generators.

Installing the plugin

Install the plugin from the update site: http://srizzo.github.com/code2code/updatesite/

Once the plugin is installed, we will have two items added to the project context menu: “Generate…” and “Create generator from selected files…”.

Installing the VRaptor2 example generators

Create a “generators” folder on the project. Download and unzip the VRaptor2 generators examples there.

Setting up the project

Let’s use a generator to install the frameworks and initial configurations we need.

Run the “Generate…” item from the project context menu. A wizard listing the installed generators will open. Select the Initial structure generator and click Next.

Configure the base package for the generated classes, the path the HSQLDB database will be created and click Finish.

The plugin will generate the necessary files and libs for our project, and log the operation to the console. Note that the plugin can generate little snippets to the console, so you can copy them and paste to the appropriate files.

Copy and paste the VRaptor2 servlet mapping to the project web.xml.

Running the empty project

That’s all. Now, we can run the project and see a working initial project, with a beautiful Welcome screen. You may wish to take a look at the generated files. The Initial project generator has generated all the jars and files we need to start working.

Generating the Product crud

Open again the generator wizard and now select the CRUD generator.

Set the parameters for the Product model.

Now, instead of just clicking Finish, you may wish to take a look further at the next step, by clicking Next.

As you will see, in this step you’re able to unmark templates for generation, change the destination for each one (a blank destination means it will be printed on the console), and preview/change the resulting contents. Just click Finish to generate the files.

Look at the console view for generated snippets. Copy the hibernate mapping to the hibernate.cfg.xml file.

Don’t forget to do the same for the DaoFactory entry (image), the views.properties mappings (image) and the product link for the index page (image)

The result

Run the project again. You will see a Product index now on the home page. Click it.

That’s all. You can now create, edit, view and delete products

On a Mac, we can use some Applescript to help with that.

Paste it to your ~/.profile:

# open a new tab on Terminal with the current working dir
function newtab {
	osascript -e "
		tell application \"System Events\" to tell process \"Terminal\" to keystroke \"t\" using command down
		tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"cd \\\"$(PWD)\\\"\" in selected tab of the front window
	" > /dev/null 2>&1
}

Now you just need to type “newtab”

Don’t you wish you could generate common sets of files with parameterized content, just like the rails guys do?

Well, I do.

Why not?

What I want is:

• Simplicity: No UML, no XML, no new languages to learn
• Flexibility: Edit and create my own generators, on a per project/frameworks basis
• Ease of use: Easily create generators: no tons of files to write, little configuration. Easily configure parameters and generate files.

So, I didn’t like the existing plugins I’ve found.

Let’s try one ourselves…

Building a lightweight code generation tool

As a programmer, code is what I do, and I think is the best way to metaprogramming. So, let’s use known template engines instead of UML, XML or meta-languages.

I want have custom generators on a per project/framework basis, and be able to easily refine them over time. So, let’s just put them all on a folder on the project and have the plugin look there. No zips. No jars. No compile.

As for configuration, all I want is to generate files, with parameterized content. We should need no more than tell the parameters needed for our templates, and the destinations for each generated file.

When using a generator, a wizard should ask the values for the parameters and generate the files to the proper destinations.

code2code plugin for eclipse

With code2code you can:

• Generate a set of files based on templates, writen in template languages you already know/work: groovy (jsp-like), freemarker or velocity
• Easily create your generators, providing only two properties-like configuration files: one with destinations of the generated files and one telling the parameters your templates uses.
• Use a wizard to run a generator, set its parameter values and preview and change the files and contents to be generated.

I’m pretty satisfied now with the result. That’s more or less what I had in mind, and though the project is still in an early beta stage, it already works very well (thanks to jBehave and SWTBot) and it is already been really useful.

Checkout the project page if you want to try it out.

I will post more on this soon.