Telosys is a simple and pragmatic code generator. Provided as a Command Line Interface tool and as an Eclipse Plugin, it uses an original approach based on 2 kinds of  “lightweight models” ( “database model” and “DSL/text model”). This tool aims to provide an alternative to the classical “UML first” approach that requires a significant workload at the beginning of the project to create a reliable and accurate model.

Unlike conventional tools (tools based on MDA/XMI approach), Telosys is very light and can be considered as a “tactical tool”. It has been designed by developers for developers and focuses on a quick start (its motto is “remain simple”). The typical usage of Telosys can be described in 3 steps:

1. Create your lightweight model

The first step is the setup of a lightweight model containing the entities definitions that will be used to generate the code.  There are two ways to do that: with a “Database Model” or with a “DSL Model”

  • Database Model

If you have an existing relational database it can be used by Telosys to create automatically a “database model“.

Indeed the database schema is by itself a “model”. Telosys will connect to the database and discover all the tables and their relationships in order to create the model for you. This kind of model is stored in XML format in a single file (the “.dbrep” file) and contains an entity for each table. Once the model has been created, it can be updated and enriched in order to provide exactly what is expected  for the code generation (it’s the refining step)

The Database model editor in Eclipse :

Telosys Database model editor in Eclipse

  • DSL Model

If you want to start from scratch you can create a “DSL model“. This model is defined as a set of text files (one “.entity” file for each entity) with a very simple syntax. This model is a kind of entity–relationship model. Each entity has a set of attributes, each attribute can define :

  • a typed value (eg: “id : int”, “manager : boolean”, “name : string”, “birthdate : date”, “price : decimal”, “comment : text”, …)
  • a reference to a single entity (eg :  “driver : Driver” to reference a “Driver” entity)
  • a list of entities (eg :  “drivers : Driver [ ]” to reference 0..N “Driver” entities) .

Otherwise, complementary information can be added to each attribute in order to characterize them more precisely (eg: @Id, @Min(12), @NotNull, etc ). The model can be improved gradually over time just by editing the entities’ files.

The DSL model editor in Eclipse ( extensions are also available for VSCode and Atom ) :

Telosys DSL model editor in Eclipse

These two types of models ( database model and DSL model) are different but are used in the same way by the generator thanks to a “generic model” interface which exposes an abstract view of the model

Overview of the Telosys workflow and structure

 

2. Choose the code-generation template

Once the model is ready, you need a set of templates in order to define the way the code will be generated. The generator is based on the “Velocity” engine, hence the well-known Velocity syntax is used to define the templates. Templates are organized in “bundles”, a bundle is a set of templates focusing a specific goal (for example web interface, persistence layer, etc)

Some ready-to-use templates are available on GitHub (each Git repository is a bundle of templates, predefined templates for Java, JavaScript, Python, etc are available in the repository). All the templates can be adapted to conform with specific project requirements, and new templates can be created if necessary.

The templates editor :

Template editor for code generationin Telosys

 

3. Generate your application code

Finally, the last and simplest step is the generation. The generation will apply the selected templates on the selected entities as shown below (entities on the left part, templates on the right part).

Code-generator for Telosys

It’s possible to select all or only part of the entities and templates.  All kinds of text files can be generated, so the tool can be used to generate any kind of languages (Java, PHP, Python, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, C#, etc) with any kind of framework (Spring, Bottle, Angular, VueJS, etc)

Project bootstrapping

Very often Telosys is used to bootstrap a project. It provides scaffolding capabilities that can be used to accelerate the development of all the layers of the architecture, including unit tests and integration tests.

Example for a Java web/REST application with Postman for REST tests :

Bootstrapping a Java + REST application with Telosys

Summary

Thanks to its pragmatic approach Telosys is generally used as a “development accelerator”, it allows a quick start for different kinds of projects. The ”lightweight model” can be more or less refined depending on the context.

For more information, see :

Or check this presentation

(the first version of this post was published in 2013, it has been updated since then to reflect the evolution of Telosys)

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