17 September 2004 - Visual Basic Express and SoProMach

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17 September 2004 - Visual Basic Express and SoProMach

1	Extending Visual Basic Express 2005 Beta 1 with a Somusar generator

2	Requirements

3	Preparing an integration workspace in VB Express

4	Extending VB Express with SoProMach/XML-VB

4.1	Gaining access to the "External Tools..." button

4.2	Adding external tool SoProMach/XML-VB

5	Running SoProMach/XML-VB from within VB Express

5.1	Building the VB project

5.2	Generating "Northwind.vb"

5.3	Extending class Northwind

5.4	Generating "Southwind.vb"

Appendix A

Installing SoProMach/XML-VB

1 - Extending Visual Basic Express 2005 Beta 1 with a Somusar generator

A previous article discussed how Eclipse 3.0 can be extended with a Somusar generator to consistently and efficiently produce a number of interrelated Java classes, JSP and configuration files.

This article describes how to integrate an XML-driven Somusar generator with another popular integrated development environment (IDE): Microsoft Visual Basic Express 2005 Beta 1 (VB Express).

Such an integration shows how to use VB Express comfortable user interface to directly drive SoProMach's powerful code generation facilities, significantly improving VB Express users' productivity without limiting their development experience.

The Somusar generator used for this article produces code conforming to Kathleen Dollard's article "Generate .NET Code With XSLT" published by Visual Studio Magazine. Depending on different project requirements and constraints, different Somusar generators can be integrated with different IDEs to produce source code, configuration files, and documentation compliant to those requirements and constraints.

2 - Requirements

This article assumes that you have a working installation of both Visual Basic Express 2005 Beta 1 and SoProMach/XML-VB on Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Instructions on how to install and run the SoProMach/XML-VB generator are provided in the appendix to this article. Please refer to the generator description for information on how to request the free trial package of the generator.

3 - Preparing an integration workspace in VB Express

To test the SoProMach/XML-VB generator we suggest you to set up a new project (menu "File -> New Project") called "vb_sopromach" in VB Express. Choose the default type for new projects ("Windows Application") as shown in the following picture.

Figure 1 - Creating a new VB Express project

After creating the new project, you need to add three files from the SoProMach/XML-VB installation folder: "Northwind.vb", "Northwind.xml", and "Southwind.xml". To do so, open the "Add Existing Item" dialog (menu "Project -> Add Existing Item") and look in the generator folder. Select to view files of type "All Files". You can add the three files at once, as shown in the next picture. Click on "Add".

Figure 2 - Adding files to the VB project

Your Visual Basic Express 2005 Beta 1 should now look as shown in the next picture: the Solution Explorer should list the added files.

Figure 3 - VB Express after adding files

Now close the project (menu "File -> Close Project"): click on "Save" in the two dialog boxes that will pop up one after the other.

4 - Extending VB Express with SoProMach/XML-VB

Up to now you have created a simple VB.NET project with one class and two XML files. Extending VB Express with the generator is not more complex than that, but you first need to customize VB Express to show you the "External Tools..." item of menu "Tools", as the generator is configured as an external tool.

4.1 - Gaining access to the "External Tools..." button

Open the "Customize" dialog (menu "Tools -> Customize"). Select tab "Commands", then click on "Rearrange Commands" (see below).

Figure 4 - Commands customization in VB Express

Now select menu bar "Tools" in dialog "Rearrange Commands", then click on "Add", as shown in the following picture.

Figure 5 - Adding VB Express commands

Select category "Tools", then scroll down to, and select, command "External Tools...". The dialog settings are shown in the next picture.

Figure 6 - Adding command "External Tools..."

Click on "OK". The "Rearrange Commands" dialog should now look as in the picture below.

Figure 7 - Command "External Tools..." added

Click on "Close", then close also dialog "Customize".

4.2 - Adding external tool SoProMach/XML-VB

You can now open the external tools configuration dialog via menu "Tools -> External Tools...".

Set the input fields as follows (Note: we chose to install SoProMach/XML-VB under "C:\vb_user\vb_dotnet_2": in case you chose a different folder, change the settings below accordingly):

- Title:             Sopromach/VB
- Command:           C:\vb_user\vb_dotnet_2\pocbin\win\tefigel.exe
- Arguments:         C:\vb_user\vb_dotnet_2\ide_bridge.tfg $(ItemPath)
- Initial directory: C:\vb_user\vb_dotnet_2

Set "Use Output Window" to active. The dialog settings are shown in the next picture. Now click on "OK".

Figure 8 - Adding SoProMach/XML-VB with dialog "External Tools..."

5 - Running SoProMach/XML-VB from within VB Express

You are now ready to run the generator, but before generating new code you need to make sure that your project gets built without errors. To achieve that, you first need to add references to external resources.

5.1 - Building the VB project

Re-open the project (menu "File -> Recent Projects -> vb_sopromach"), then open dialog "Add Reference" (menu "Project -> Add Reference"). Scroll down to the list bottom, then select both "System.Data.dll" and "System.Xml.dll", as shown below. Then click on "OK".

Figure 9 - Adding project references

Build the project (menu "Build -> Build vb_sopromach") and make sure that your VB Express window looks like the checkpoint picture below, with message "Build succeeded".

Figure 10 - Checkpoint 1

5.2 - Generating "Northwind.vb"

The input models to SoProMach/XML-VB are XML files, such as "Northwind.xml" and "Southwind.xml". Double-click on "Northwind.xml" in the Solution Explorer to open it. Then run SoProMach/XML-VB (menu "Tools -> Sopromach/VB"). Your VB Express should now look like the following picture.

Figure 11 - Applying the generator on "Northwind.xml"

You have now re-generated "Northwind.vb" exactly as it was in the generator installation, so that nothing special has happened yet.

5.3 - Extending class Northwind

Edit class Northwind by double-clicking on "Northwind.vb" in the Solution Explorer, and search repeatedly for "phone" within that class (menu "Edit -> Quick find"). There are 17 occurrences of "phone".

Now, suppose that your task is to extend class Northwind to also manage cellphones. This is very similar to managing phones, so you should duplicate those 17 code fragments, changing "phone" or "Phone" to "cellphone" or "Cellphone". You can perform this task by means of copy-paste-edit cycles, or you can achieve the same result more quickly and safely using SoProMach/XML-VB.

Click on tab "Northwind.xml" to edit it, then duplicate the row describing DataColumn "Phone". Change the copy to "Cellphone" as shown in the next picture.

Figure 12 - Adding Cellphone to "Northwind.xml"

Save file "Northwind.xml", then run again SoProMach/XML-VB (menu "Tools -> Sopromach/VB"). VB Express will pop up the question shown below: click on "Yes".

Figure 13 - Reloading "Northwind.vb"

Now click on tab "Northwind.vb" and search for "cellphone": you will thus get a feeling of the effectiveness of extending Visual Basic Express 2005 Beta 1 with SoProMach/XML-VB.

5.4 - Generating "Southwind.vb"

You can now instruct your code-generator-enabled VB Express to produce similar code for a different class of the same type. Instead of the Northwind code, you will generate equivalent code for a hypothetical Southwind database.

Add an empty class Southwind (menu "Project -> Add Class") as shown in the following picture.

Figure 14 - Adding an empty Southwind

Check that the project gets built correctly (menu "Project -> Build") as shown below.

Figure 15 - Checkpoint 2

Double-click on "Southwind.xml" to open it in the editing area of VB Express. Note that this is roughly the same as "Northwind.xml": all occurrences of "North" have been changed to "South". But you can add new attributes and extend this XML model as you prefer.

To complete this exercise, run again SoProMach/XML-VB, but this time on "Southwind.xml". Confirm that VB Express should reload the modified "Southwind.vb", then view it and rebuild the project. Your VB Express should now look like the picture below.

Figure 16 - Generation completed

Appendix A - Installing SoProMach/XML-VB

Somusar proof-of-concept (POC) generators are delivered in tar/gzip format. POC packages contain a SoProMach and the textual input and scripts that re-generate the POC target code. Compressed POC packages are well below 1 MByte in size, and can be uncompressed with all most common unzip and uncompress utilities.

To install SoProMach/XML-VB proceed as follows. Unpack the POC package to a new folder of your choice (suggestion: C:\vb_user\vb_dotnet_2). After unpacking the new folder should look as shown below.

Figure 17 - Unpacking the generator trial package

Double-clicking on BAT file "w1_prepare" should result in the command window of next picture. This step removes file "Northwind.vb" which will be produced by the generator.

Figure 18 - Setting up the generator

Press Return once to set up the generator, then once again to close the command window. Now double-click on BAT file "w2_generate": SoProMach/XML-VB will generate "Northwind.vb" from "Northwind.xml" as shown in the following picture.

Figure 19 - Running the generator

Press Return to close the window. The next step is optional: double-clicking on BAT file "w3_results" will list the file produced by the generator ("Northwind.vb").

Figure 20 - Result listing

The installation folder window should now look as in the following screenshot: "Northwind.vb" has now been re-generated.

Figure 21 - Re-generated "Northwind.vb"

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