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Loading and navigating a DSL Model [message #916144]

Tue, 18 September 2012 15:59

Matthias Villiger

Messages: 232
Registered: September 2011

Senior Member

Hi

I am a beginner in Xtext and have a few basic questions. Maybe you can give me some examples/hints or point me into the right direction. Smile

With e.g. XML I have the possibility to load an existing file into a DOM representation. This allows me to navigate and traverse through the tree at runtime.

Now I would like to replace this XML by a new DSL using Xtext. Does Xtext provide anything that gives me the same possibilities as with the XML?

So after defining the DSL and creating a sample file, is there a possibility to programmatically load this example file into a memory model using Xtext libraries?
And if yes, how can this be achieved and how can the model then be traversed to access the information of the example file?

Thank you very much for your help
matthias

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Re: Loading and navigating a DSL Model [message #916156 is a reply to message #916144]

Tue, 18 September 2012 16:15

Hallvard Traetteberg

Messages: 673
Registered: July 2009
Location: Trondheim, Norway

Senior Member

Hi,

On 18.09.12 08.59, Matthias Villiger wrote:
>
> I am a beginner in Xtext and have a few basic questions. Maybe you can
> give me some examples/hints or point me into the right direction. :)

You should have some understanding of EMF to utilize Xtext, like
modeling with Ecore, loading resources and navigating EObjects.

> Now I would like to replace this XML by a new DSL using Xtext. Does
> Xtext provide anything that gives me the same possibilities as with the
> XML?

When Xtext parses a file, you get a DOM consisting of instances of your
Ecore classes assembled into a hierarchy corresponding to the parsed
file's text.

> So after defining the DSL and creating a sample file, is there a
> possibility to programmatically load this example file into a memory
> model using Xtext libraries?

Xtext registers a so-called resource factory for a file extension, so
whenever such a file is loaded by EMF's the parser will kick in and
build the EObject structure for you.

> And if yes, how can this be achieved and how can the model then be
> traversed to access the information of the example file?

When you have loaded the resource, you just traverse its contents.

Hallvard

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