Question

I’m writing a Java application that needs a lot of static data that is stored in many enum types. Since I would like an user-friendly way to customize this data using for example xml or json files but I’m not allowed to do it directly with enums I was looking for a way to elegantly do it.

Maybe a good solution would be to have a separate java program that reads the xml files and produces the java sources that are then compiled with the remaining part of the sources. My doubs is how to automatize this process in a stand alone way (eg ant?) and how to integrate it seamlessly with eclipse so that it is autOmatically done when I’m working with the project.. Does anything similar to what I’m looking already exists? Any suggestion to solve my problem?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Create a project whose sole job is to generate java from your sources.
Make sure that the generation phase is done by Ant.

Now, wrap this project into eclipse and use a custom ant builder, that calls the target in your already existing build.xml.

This is a standard part of our dev infrastructure, so this definitely works.