From Java: a cantisfile extractor

Cantis is a living documentation glossary generator for Java projects. It helps to keep your glossary up-to-date by extracting it from your Java classes and their JavaDoc descriptions.

Why

Cantis was created to overcome miscommunication about the meaning of domain-specific terms between co-workers (e.g. developers, managers, sales, customer heroes and so on).

It also may give developers an extra nudge to document classes with care.

Lastly, Elegant Object Principles are applied, to learn more about "true" Object-Oriented Programming and how Functional Programming can complement OOP. Hopefully this can lead to meaningful discussions about its applications.

Example

Consider a class:

/**
 * A person that uses our software.
 */
@Term
class User {

}

Cantis can turn it into a glossary:

User: A person that uses our software.

Cantis also generates its own glossary and cantisfile (a json formatted glossary).

Install

In order to use the @Term annotation, you can add a dependency to cantis to your project:

Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.korthout</groupId>
    <artifactId>cantis</artifactId>
    <version>0.2</version>
</dependency>

Gradle:

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.github.korthout:cantis:0.2'
}

If you don't want to have this compile-time dependency, You can also declare your own @Term annotation. Just make sure to call it @Term and you can place it in any package you like.

Usage

Using Cantis on your own project is easy. Simply:

• annotate a class with @Term
• add a JavaDoc description to the class
• type cantis generate in your terminal or use the maven plugin

Cantis can be used as a maven plugin and via its commandline interface (cli).

Maven plugin

To use the maven plugin, simply add the following to the plugins section of your pom.xml.

<plugin>
    <groupId>com.github.korthout</groupId>
    <artifactId>cantis</artifactId>
    <version>0.2</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>cantis</id>
            <phase>generate-resources</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>generate</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <format>json</format>
                <target>cantisfile.json</target>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Note: Using the maven plugin requires jdk11.

Note: Due to limitations in maven, this plugin creates a separate glossary file for each maven module. For multi-module maven projects that wish to aggregate the definitions from all of the submodules into one glossary file, we recommend that you use the cli instead.

Commandline interface

The cli is more flexible than the maven plugin. It does not require jdk 11 and can be used on multi-module maven projects.

Its main usage is the generate command:

cantis generate [<options>] [--] [<source>]
    <source>: The root directory of your source code. Defaults to .
    
    Options:
    -f, --format <format>   Output format (options: json, plain; default: plain)
    -t, --target <target>   Path to output file

You'll need the executable jar. Check releases for the latest version. Download and execute it as any regular jar.

java -jar cantis-0.2.jar <command> [--] [<arguments>]

Shorthand usage To use cantis generate instead of java -jar cantis-0.2.jar generate, download the binary from releases to the same folder and give it execution permissions.

chmod +x ~/downloads/cantis/cantis

For easy access, place the binary on your PATH environment variable.

export PATH=$PATH:~/downloads/cantis

How to contribute?

Just fork the repo and send us a pull request. If you have any questions, simply create an issue so we can talk about it.

Code of Conduct All contributions must adhere to the code of conduct, which shouldn't be hard. Just be nice.

Design principles. When creating pull requests, please keep the design principles in mind. We always look for the best solution, even if it doesn't fit these principles. If you are unsure about whether you applied these principles correctly (or don't know how), please still create your pull request so we can discuss it and learn from it together. Several exceptions to the design principles have already been made. For example, annotations against nullability, equals/hashcode generation, and some OO-boundry situations. We welcome discussions about these exceptions and other elegant object related subjects.

Thanks

This software would not be possible without these awesome projects:

• Airline - parsing Git like command line structures
• Cactoos - Object-Oriented Java primitives
• Javaparser - a simple and lightweight set of tools to generate, analyze, and process Java code

A full list of projects we depend on can be found in the pom file.

License (MIT)

Copyright 2018 Nico Korthout

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.