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You're reading from Implementing Domain-Specific Languages with Xtext and Xtend If you know Eclipse then learning how to implement a DSL using Xtext is a natural progression. And this guide makes it easy to get started through a step-by-step approach accompanied with simple examples.

Product type Paperback

Published in Aug 2013

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781782160304

Length 342 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Tools

Xtext

Concepts

Domain Specific Languages

Author (1):

Lorenzo Bettini

View More author details

Table of Contents (21) Chapters

Implementing Domain-Specific Languages with Xtext and Xtend

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

1. Implementing a DSL

2. Creating Your First Xtext Language FREE CHAPTER

3. The Xtend Programming Language

4. Validation

5. Code Generation

6. Customizations

7. Testing

8. An Expression Language

9. Type Checking

10. Scoping

11. Building and Releasing

12. Xbase

13. Bibliography

Index

Testing the UI

Most of the mechanisms of a DSL implemented in Xtext can be tested with plain Java Junit tests without a UI environment. However, when testing UI features, tests need a running Eclipse.

In the Entities DSL we did not customize the content assist, thus we do not really need to test it; however, for more complex DSLs, you want to test that the custom content assist works as expected, and you want to avoid having to manually check that.

Eclipse provides a specific launch configuration, "Junit Plug-in Test", which executes Junit tests with a running Eclipse.

Implementing tests for the UI concepts might be tricky, since usually you will need to write code to set up Eclipse workbench infrastructures such as projects, files, and so on. Xtext provides some base classes for testing UI concepts which do most of the job for you, so that you can simply test specific features without having to worry about the setup steps.