VMF

VMF is a lightweight modeling framework. It conveniently translates annotated Java interfaces into powerful implementations. It writes all the inevitable but boring boilerplate code for you and provides a modern and stable API. It is designed to work with the newest versions of Java as soon as they are released. It works well with Java 11-22. It generates/supports:

• getters and setters
• default values
• containment
• builder API
• equals() and hashCode()
• deep and shallow cloning
• change notification
• undo/redo
• object graph traversal API via iterators and streams
• immutable types and read-only wrappers
• delegation
• annotations
• reflection
• ...

A VMF model consists of annotated Java interfaces. We could call this "wannabe" code. Just specify the interface and its properties and get a fully functional implementation including property setters and getters, builders, iterators, and much more. Even for a simple model VMF provides a lot of useful APIs:

Using VMF

Checkout the tutorial projects: https://github.com/miho/VMF-Tutorials

VMF comes with excellent Gradle support. Just add the plugin like so (get the latest version here):

plugins {
  id "eu.mihosoft.vmf" version "0.2.9.4" // use latest version
}

Now just add the model definitions to the VMF source folder, e.g., src/main/vmf/. The package name must end with .vmfmodel, for example:

package eu.mihosoft.vmf.tutorial.vmfmodel;

import eu.mihosoft.vmf.core.Container;
import eu.mihosoft.vmf.core.Contains;

interface Parent {

    @Contains(opposite = "parent")
    Child[] getChildren();

    String getName();
}

interface Child {
    @Container(opposite="children")
    Parent getParent();
    
    int getValue();
}

Just call the vmfGenModelSources task to generate the implementation.

To improve IDE support, enable the IntelliJ support via

buildscript {
  ext.vmfPluginIntelliJIntegration = true
}

Building VMF (Core, Runtime and Plugin)

Requirements

• Java >= 11
• Internet connection (dependencies are downloaded automatically)
• IDE: Gradle Plugin (not necessary for command line usage)

IDE

Open the VMF Gradle project in your favourite IDE (tested with IntelliJ 2024) and build it by executing the publishToMavenLocal task.

Command Line

Navigate to the VMFGradle project (i.e., path/to/VMF/) and enter the following command

Bash (Linux/macOS/Cygwin/other Unix shell)

bash gradlew publishToMavenLocal

Windows (CMD)

gradlew publishToMavenLocal

NOTE: to execute the tests within the VMF project (basic tests) execute the test task after executing publishToMavenLocal.

Testing VMF (Core, Runtime & Plugin)

To execute the full test suite, navigate to the test project (i.e., path/to/VMF/test-suite) and enter the following command

Bash (Linux/macOS/Cygwin/other Unix shell)

bash gradlew test

Windows (CMD)

gradlew test

This will use the latest snapshot vmf and gradle-plugin to execute the tests defined in the test-suite project.

Viewing the Report

An HTML version of the test report is located in the build folder test-suite/build/reports/tests/test/index.html.