Welcome To GetOpt Generator

GetOpt Generator is a Java tool that generates a command-line argument parser from an XML file.

Both a 'parser' and 'config' class are generated, which allows your program to either be launched from the command-line or programmatically configured and executed from another Java application.

GetOpt Generator is Self-Hosting meaning it uses itself to generate its command-line parser.

Configuration

You can look at GetOpt.xml, the XML used by GetOpt to generate its own command-line parser, for an example of what the XML configuration file should look like.

Basically each option gets:

name

Long name of the option. Separate logical words with "_" (i.e. long_opt)

short

Short (1 char) alias for the option

type

One of:

• boolean
• integer
• string
• input-file (verifies that file exists)
• input-dir (verifies that dir exists)
• output-file (treated as string for now)
• output-dir (treated as string for now)

required

yes | no

default

A default value appropriate for the type

Downloading

If you are interested in this project, and have Java (5.0+) installed, why not download it and give it a try?

Download GetOpt v0.81.1

On the download page, you'll find zip and tar.gz versions of both the binary and source distributions.

The distribution (currently) contains all required .jar files necessary to run, so it should be relatively simple to try it out.

Running GetOpt

Calling GetOpt with --help generates the following output

options for GetOpt :

        [ --help | -? ]
        ( --xmlFile | -x ) xml_file
        ( --javaDir | -j ) java_dir
        ( --exeClass | -e ) exe_class
        ( --mainClass | -m ) main_class
        ( --configClass | -c ) config_class

NOTE: Options in brackets '[]' are optional.
      All camel-case long opts can be represented using lowercase,
      as well as with '-' or '_' seperating the camel-cased words
      (i.e. --longOpt | --longopt | --long_opt | --long-opt)

xml_file

The XML file containing the configuration

main_class

The fully qualified name (package+class) of the generated class that will parse the command line (i.e. contains the main() method).

config_class

The fully qualified name (package_class) of the generated class that will store the config information.

java_dir

The base output directory (i.e. your src directory). The generated files will be stored in /java/dir/package/path/ClassName.java

exe_class

The Java class that the generated command-line parser should call after parsing the command line.

The exe class is expected to contain a constructor that accepts a config_class instance.

The exe class is expected to contain an execute() method, which will be called by the command-line parser.

It is the responsibility of the exe class to validate the parsed config, but the config_class is generated with a validate() function which does the heavy lifting.

Example EXE class.

Comments, Problems, Bug Reports

If you have any comments, or need help, feel free to Email Me.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

You are also invited to register a Trac account. Registration is free and registered users can contribute to Trac tickets as well as create new tickets.

To Do

• Impliment minOccurs/maxOccurs options (started)

• Express/Enforce inter-option relationsips

• Support multiple occurrences of an option (i.e. 'list'

• Support name-value pairs (i.e. 'map' type)

• Named operands

• Create a better '--help' screen

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