Message Library IntelliJ Plugin

Experimentation in writing an IntelliJ plugin for an hypothetical message library.

Core Concept

The message library use JSon Schema to dynamically define message data model. Data is extracted from message using JSon Pointer defined as Java literal strings and, as Java has no knowledge of JSon Pointer, the plugin helps to validate the JSon Pointers by finding properties in JSon schema linked to message type.

Example

A schema is liked to a message type by Java annotation:

@SchemaFile("/MyType.json")
public class MyType implements MessageType {
}

Then data can be extracted from the message using JSon Pointer:

public void process(Message<MyType> message) {
    System.out.println(message.getString("/address/mainStreet"));
}

The Plugin

The plugin uses two IntelliJ feature to validate JSon Pointer:

an indexer (com.github.madbrain.jschema.ClassSchemaIndex) to build an index from class name to linked schema
an annotator (com.github.madbrain.jschema.ExtractorSpecAnnotator) to find calls to Message.getString() and validate the JSon pointer in the argument using the schema linked to the actual type of the the generic parameter.

Usage

Import project in IntelliJ
Run graddle task runIde
Use example-project as project in the runtime IDE

TODO

the code is extremely dirty: better use the availables APIs?
write tests using Annotator Test Tutorial

Links

This plugin is mostly based on: