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Asked: 2026-05-28T14:09:40+00:00

I work with jQuery+Spring+Hibernate stack a lot. Usually I find myself developing complex interfaces

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I work with jQuery+Spring+Hibernate stack a lot. Usually I find myself developing complex interfaces and integrating them all the way down to the complete stack, but sometimes I only have to make simple interfaces that allow CRUD operations on a simple database table. Developing these CRUD interfaces table-wise usually becomes a repetitive mechanical job which could be easily generated by a script as well. Ideally I would like to give table name to the script and it should generate every necessary class from Hibernate entity to the front-end controller (including JSPs).

So here are my questions:

  1. Is it a good idea to write script in this case? Would it involve too much complexity (apparently I don’t see much of it but may be I am missing some point)?
  2. What language should be used to write such scripts? (Java seems too heavy for this, I guess a dynamic language should suite better)

P.S. I know Spring Roo does reverse engineering, but I found couple of bottlenecks there.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Lisp-based languages are very popular choices for this kind of code generation because they are dynamic,homoiconic languages that follow the principle that “code is data”.

    As a result generating the code according to a specific template to complete a task is generally not difficult – you just write a macro that expands to whatever code you need. A macro is just a regular function with the exception that it runs at compile-time (to generate the required code) rather than at runtime so you don’t even have to learn a different macro language.

    For a Java-based stack I’d strongly suggest taking a look at Clojure, which is a great langauge for code generation and “glue code” on the JVM.

    Here’s an example of the kind of data DSL that you can create with Clojure : Korma

    (defdb prod (postgres {:db "korma"
                       :username "db"
                       :password "dbpass"}))

(defentity address)
(defentity user
  (has-many address))

(select user
  (with address)
  (fields :firstName :lastName :address.state)
  (where {:email "korma@sqlkorma.com"}))

    As you can see, a fairly simple DSL can be used to script pretty complex database interactions. All the necessary boilerplate code gets generated for you behind the scenes: you only need to focus on the business logic.

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