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Documented (a bit) the record generator. 

git-svn-id: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jakarta/poi/trunk@352161 13f79535-47bb-0310-9956-ffa450edef68
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Glen Stampoultzis 2002-03-09 01:41:01 +00:00
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src/documentation/xdocs/hssf/book.xml
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<menu label="HSSF">
<menu-item label="HOWTO" href="how-to.html"/>
<menu-item label="Use Case" href="use-case.html"/>
<menu-item label="Record Generator" href="record-generator.html"/>
</menu>
</book>

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src/documentation/xdocs/hssf/record-generator.xml Normal file
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE document PUBLIC "-//APACHE//DTD Documentation V1.0//EN" "../dtd/document-v10.dtd">
<document>
<header>
<title>Record Generator HOWTO</title>
<authors>
<person email="glens@apache.org" name="Glen Stampoultzis" id="glens"/>
</authors>
</header>
<body>
<s1 title="How to Use the Record Generator">
<s2 title="History">
<p>
The record generator was born from my frustration with translating
the Excel records to Java classes. Doing this manually is a time
consuming process. It's also very easy to make mistakes.
</p>
<p>
I wanted something that would take the defintition of what a
record looked like and do all the boring stuff for me. Thus the
record generator was born.
</p>
</s2>
<s2 title="Capabilities">
<p>
The record generator takes XML as input and produced the following
output:
<ul>
<li>A java file capabile of decoding and encoding the record.</li>
<li>A test class with provides a fill-in-the-blanks implementation of a test case
for ensuring the record operates as designed.</li>
</ul>
</p>
</s2>
<s2 title="Usage">
<p>
The record generator is invoked as an Ant target (generate-records). It goes
through looking for all files in src/records/defintitions ending with _record.xml.
It then creates two files; the Java record definition and the Java test case template.
</p>
<p>
The records themselves have the following general layout:
</p>
<source><![CDATA[
<record id="0x1032" name="Frame" package="org.apache.poi.hssf.record">
<description>The frame record indicates whether there is a border around the displayed text of a chart.</description>
<author>Glen Stampoultzis (glens at apache.org)</author>
<fields>
<field type="int" size="2" name="border type">
<const name="regular" value="0" description="regular rectangle or no border"/>
<const name="shadow" value="1" description="rectangle with shadow"/>
</field>
<field type="int" size="2" name="options">
<bit number="0" name="auto size" description="excel calculates the size automatically if true"/>
<bit number="1" name="auto position" description="excel calculates the position automatically"/>
</field>
</fields>
</record>
]]></source>
<p>
The Java records are regenerated each time the record generator is run, however the test stubs are
only created if the test stub does not already exist. What this means is that you may change
test stubs but not the generated records.
</p>
</s2>
<s2 title="How it Works">
<p>
TODO: Fill this out more
</p>
<p>
See record.xsl, record_test.xsl, FieldIterator.java, RecordUtil.java, RecordGenerator.java
</p>
<p>
</p>
</s2>
<s2 title="Limitations">
<p>
The record generator does not handle all possible record types and is not ment to. Sometimes it's
going to make more sense to generate the records manually. The main point of this thing is to
make the easy stuff simple.
</p>
<p>
Currently the record generator is optimized to create Excel records. It could be adapted to create
Word records with a little poking around.
</p>
<p>
Currently the the XSL file that generates the record calls out to java objects. This would have been
better done as Javascript inside the XSL file itself. The java code for the record generation is
currently quite messy with minimal comments. Sorry, I wrote it as a proof-of-concept and just went
too far.
</p>
</s2>
</s1>
</body>
</document>