MetaPrograms

Enables easy meta-programming by providing static analysis, transformation, and code generation mechanisms in an extensible set of programming languages.

New to meta-programming? it's a technique in which programs treat other programs as their data. It means, a program can be designed to read other programs, transform them, and generate derived programs automatically. This allows programmers to minimize amount of code to express a solution, reducing the development time. Read more on Wikipedia.

Goal

Provide meta-programming infrastructure layer to full-stack intentions-as-code frameworks based on .NET Core.

Intentions-as-code is an approach, which applies meta-programming to full-stack development of SaaS and enterprise applications. It aims to let developers express the entire application, including non-functionals, with minimal amount of code on conceptual level (abstracted from concrete technology); then impelmentation details are generated per selected technology stacks. Read more here.

Status

WARNING: In early stages of development. Good for experimenting with the concept, but not for production. No backward compatibility is matintained at this time.

Demo

Requirements: .NET Core 2.1 SDK (runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows)

What's in the demo

• Example.WebUIModel: a sample programming model of single-page web apps
• Example.HyperappAdapter: a sample technology adapter that generates JavaScript web app based on the Hyperapp framework
• Example.AspNetAdapter: a sample technology adapter that generates C# backend service based on ASP.NET Core Web API.
• Example.App: intentions-of-code (in C#) of a sample web app, including some simple backend logic. You may also write your own intentions-as-code project, and run it with the demo (explained in the Getting Started section).

For more details on the above modules, read about proof-of-conept integration test.

How to run

$ git clone https://github.com/nwheels-io/MetaPrograms.git
$ cd MetaPrograms/Source/Demo
$ dotnet build
$ dotnet run

What to expect

Once the run completes, the generated projects will be placwd in the DemoResults subfolder:

• DemoResults/FrontEnd will contain an npm project of Hyperapp web app (client side)
• DemoResults/BackEnd will contain .NET Core project of ASP.NET Core Web API (server side)

Languages and platforms

MetaPrograms is developed in C# for .NET Core, and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

The set of languages supported by the framework is extensible. Also, there is no limit on platforms, frameworks, and products that can be targeted by the generated code.

In order to analyze and generate code in specific languages, corresponding language-specific packages must be used in addition to the base MetaPrograms package.

The following languages are currently supported:

Language	Package	Analysis	Generation	Remarks
C#	MetaPrograms.CSharp	V	V	based on Roslyn
JavaScript	MetaPrograms.JavaScript	X	V	ES6 + JSX

The roadmap for this list is to include a dozen of languages. Note that not every package supports both the analysis and the generation: some packages only support one of the two.

Getting started

This section assumes you have cloned and built the repository, as explained in the Demo section. If you haven't done that yet:

$ git clone https://github.com/nwheels-io/MetaPrograms.git
$ cd MetaPrograms/Source/Demo
$ dotnet build

In the following instructions, <clone_folder> is the folder where you cloned the repository.

Demo with your own intentions-as-code

You can use any development environment that works with .NET Core (Visual Studio 2017, Visual Studio Code, or Rider).

• create a new class library project that targets netstandard2.0

  <Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <TargetFramework>netstandard2.0</TargetFramework>
    <LangVersion>7.2</LangVersion>
    <IsPackable>false</IsPackable>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <ProjectReference Include="..\Example.WebUIModel\Example.WebUIModel.csproj" />
  </ItemGroup>
  </Project>
  

• add a reference to Example.WebUIModel project, located at the path: <clone_folder>/Source/TestCases/CSharpAndJavaScript/Example.WebUIModel/Example.WebUIModel.csproj
• create a page class; to get the idea of how to do it, look at HelloPage.cs from the demo
  • note that the demo supports exactly one page class
• create your own view model with properties you want
  • note that the demo only supports flat view models (no nested objects or collections)
• create any number of backend services, like this: IGreetingService.cs

Make sure your project successfully builds, then:

• in terminal, go to folder <clone_folder>/Source/Demo
• run (replace /path/to/your/project with the path to fodler where your project is located):

  $ dotnet run -- /path/to/your/project
  

• the results will be placed in the <clone_folder>/Source/Demo/DemoResults folder, the same as explained in the Demo section.

Writing your own programming model

TBD

Writing technology adapters for your programming model

TBD

Contributing

TBD