Hey everybody,
Lately, I've been trying to do something which I find very cool to improve my project's productivity (at least I find it cool... ;) ).
Anyway, What I'm trying to do is to regenerate my server side's protocol classes, which is written in C# in my application's client languages, which are Java and Objective-C. (I think you see where I'm going with that...)
My main goals are:
a. Minimization of synchronization overheads. The client developers should not have to re-write server code. Also, an automatic process would hopefully reduce bugs (wrong serialization configuration, etc...).
b. Separation of client object logic and the serialization parameters. I would like to have the auto-generated code to be recreated before any version is compiled without affecting client's logic. (Partial classes, Y U NO EXIST IN JAVA?)
c. My requests form a really neat class tree. Where every node in the tree adds its own essential parameters to the request. I would like it to remain like that.
I'm here to discuss alternative solutions for Java. As partial classes do not exist. It seems like it would be necessary to do some ugly things, such as ProtocolRequest extends ProtocolRequestParameters, or maybe it would contain the parameters struct as a member. The closest method that fits my desires would be an auto-generated section within a class, and embedding changes within it.
My main concern is that it would be impossible to send a request to server properly, while my current design is trying to be very accurate and object-oriented (in other words awesome). I'm afraid that limitations imposed by Java will ruin my efforts.
I would appreciate some good advice and suggestions on how to auto-generate my classes. I would be really grateful if you guys find some good methods / maybe references to existing solutions to fit my needs.
Thank you very much!