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m2doc

How to automate M2Doc generation including the settings?

I've applied the guidance on programmatic usage of M2Doc (also with this help) to successfully generate a document via the API, which was previously prepared by using the M2Doc GUI (configured .docx plus a .genconf file). It seems to also work with a configured .docx, but without a .genconf file.

Now I would like to go a step further and ease the user interface in our application. The user should come with a .docx, include the {m:...} fields there, especially for variable definition, and then in our Eclipse application just assign model elements to the list of variables. Finally press "generate". The rest I would like to handle via the M2Doc API:

  • Get list of variables from the .docx
  • Tell M2Doc the variable objects (and their types and other required information, if that is separately necessary)
  • Provide M2Doc with sufficient information to handle AQL expressions like projectmodel::PJDiagram.allInstances() in the Word fields

I tried to analyse the M2Doc source code for this, but have some questions to achieve the goal:

  1. The parse/generate API does not create any config information into the .docx or .genconf files, right? What would be the API to at least generate the .docx config information?
  2. The source code mentions "if you are using a Generation" - what is meant with that? The use of a .genconf file (which seems to be optional for the generate API)?
  3. Where can I get the list of variables from, which M2Doc found in a .docx (during parse?), so that I can present it to the user for Object (Model Element) assignment?
  4. Do I have to tell M2Doc the types of the variables, and in which resource file they are located, besides handing over the variable objects? My guess is no, as using a blank .docx file without any M2Doc information stored also worked for the variables themselves (not for any additional AQL expressions using other types, or .oclAsType() type castings).
  5. How can I provide M2Doc with the types information for the AQL expressions mentioned above, which I normally tell it via the nsURI configuration? I handed over the complete resourceSet of my application, but that doesn't seem to be enough.

Any help would be very much appreciated!

To give you an impression of my code so far, see below - note that it's actually Javascript instead of Java, as our application has a built-in JS-Java interface.

//=================== PARSING OF THE DOCUMENT ==============================
var templateURIString = "file:///.../templateReqs.docx";
var templateURI = URI.createURI(templateURIString);

// canNOT be empty, as we get nullpointer exceptions otherwise
var options = {"TemplateURI":templateURIString};

var exceptions = new java.util.ArrayList();

var resourceSetForModels = ...; //here our application's resource set for the whole model is used, instead of M2Doc "createResourceSetForModels" - works for the moment, but not sure if some services linking is not working

var queryEnvironment = m2doc.M2DocUtils.getQueryEnvironment(resourceSetForModels, templateURI, options);
        
var classProvider = m2doc.M2DocPlugin.getClassProvider();

// empty Monitor for the moment
var monitor = new BasicMonitor();

var template = m2doc.M2DocUtils.parse(resourceSetForModels.getURIConverter(), templateURI, queryEnvironment, classProvider, monitor);

// =================== GENERATION OF THE DOCUMENT ==============================

var outputURIString = "file:///.../templateReqs.autogenerated.docx";
var outputURI = URI.createURI(outputURIString);

variables["myVar1"] = ...; // assigment of objects...

m2doc.M2DocUtils.generate(template, queryEnvironment, variables, resourceSetForModels, outputURI, monitor);

Thanks!

Solution

    1. No the API used to parse an generate don't modifies the template file nor the .genconf file. To modify the configuration of the template you will need to use the TemplateCustomProperties class. That will allow you to register your metamodels and service classes. This instormation is then used to configure the IQueryEnvironment, so you might also want to directly configure the IQueryEnvironment in your code.

    2. The generation in this context referes to the .genconf file. Note The genconf file is also an EMF model, so you can also craft one in memory to launch you generation if it's easier for you. But yes the use of a .genconf file is optional like in your code example.

    3. To the list of variables in the template you can use the class TemplateCustomProperties:

    • TemplateCustomProperties.getVariables() will list the variables that are declared with their type
    • TemplateCustomProperties.getMissingVariables() to list varaibles that are used in the template but not declared

    You can also find le list of used metamodels (EPackage nsURIs) and imported services classes.

    1. The type of variables is not needed at generation time, it's only needed if you want to validate your template. At generation time you need to pass a map from the variable name to its value as you did in your example. The value of a variable can be a any object from your model (an EObject), a String, an Integer, ... If you want to use something like oclIsKindOf(pkg::MyEClass) you will need to register the nsURI of pkg first see the next point.

    2. The code you provided should let you use something like projectmodel::PJDiagram.allInstances(). This service needs a ResourceSetRootEObjectProvider() that is initialized in M2DocUtils.getQueryEnvironment(). But you need to declare the nsURI of your metamodel in your template (see TemplateCustomProperties). This will register it in the IQueryEnvironment. You can also register it yourself using IQueryEnvironment.registerEPackage().

    This should help you finding the missing parts in the configuration of the AQL environment. Your code seems good and should work when you add the configuration part.