Do you use code generation tools? [closed]

Answer 1

We have an in-house built code generator that takes care of database access. One writes stored procedures and gets corresponding methods abstracted in a gateway class.

We also generate web services in order to properly interface with Flash -- i.e. handling exception in a sane manner.

Finally we have an exception generator that takes away the drudgery of exception best practices (tons of constructors, etc...)

Answer 2

If interested in LLBLGEN, which is excellent, you might also evaluate subsonic. Maybe even see what Rob Conery has to say about any overlap or interaction between subsonic and t4.

Answer 3

We just started using Grails here in the office. Previously, we had a set of in-house JSF/Hibernate CRUD generation scripts.

... Grails wins. The code generation from Grails is very nice and can get you a CRUD app going in about 15 minutes, without actually putting the code in the code files!

Of course, it CAN generate the actual code into the code files, when you want to modify it. Most of the time, for regular CRUD, you can get away with just changing the views.

Answer 4

Home-brewed code generators work great for building unittest cases from end-user spreadsheets that contain examples of how it should work.

See Tooling to Build Test Cases for one example.

Answer 5

I create my own tools for some tasks. Its fun to do and even saves time in the long run. For very dull tasks, it even saves your sanity.

Answer 6

Like some others here, we have also created our own code generator (Inon Datamanager/Viewmanager) for data access, HTML form handling and certain business logic operations. A key to having this work well is to design it so you never have to touch or look at the generated code.

In this way, it almost does become part of the language - the language (Java in our case) is extended to include a domain model specification and a viewmodel, and then you just fill in custom business logic with real Java code.

This gives us the right tools to communicate with analysts and business users, while still having the power of Java to set up the details of underlying behaviour.