A RetroSearch Logo

Home - News ( United States | United Kingdom | Italy | Germany ) - Football scores

Search Query:

Showing content from https://docs.pmd-code.org/pmd-doc-7.0.0-rc3/pmd_userdocs_extending_designer_reference.html below:

The rule designer | PMD Source Code Analyzer

Learn about the usage and features of the rule designer.

Installing, running, updating

The designer is part of PMD’s binary distributions. To install a distribution, see the documentation page about installing PMD.

The app needs JRE 1.8 or above to run. Be aware that on JRE 11+, the JavaFX distribution should be installed separately. Visit the JavaFX download page to download a distribution, extract it, and set the JAVAFX_HOME environment variable.

If the bin directory of your PMD distribution is on your shell’s path, then you can launch the app with

Note: pmd-ui.jar is not a runnable jar, because it doesn’t include any PMD language module, or PMD Core.

This is to allow easy updating, and let you choose the dependencies you’re interested in. The available language modules are those on the classpath of the app’s JVM. That’s why it’s recommended to use the standard PMD startup scripts, which setup the classpath with the available PMD libraries.

Updating

The latest version of the designer currently works with PMD 6.12.0 and above. You can simply replace pmd-ui-6.X.Y.jar with the latest build in the installation folder of your PMD distribution, and run it normally. Note that updating may cause some persisted state to get lost, for example the code snippet.

Usage reference

The rule designer is both a tool to inspect the tree on which PMD rules run on, and to write XPath rules in an integrated manner. This page describes the features that enable this.

AST inspection

You can enter source code in the middle zone.

Selecting nodes

There are several ways to focus a node for inspection:

Ancestor crumb bar demo

CTRL-hover selection demo

Node inspection

The left panel displays the following information:

XPath rule design

The bottom part of the UI is dedicated to designing XPath rules:

The center is an XPath expression. As you type it, the matched nodes are updated on the right, and highlighted on the code area. Autocompletion is available on some languages.

Note: you can keep several rules in the editor (there’s a tab for each of them).

Rule properties

Above the XPath expression area, the “Properties” button allows you to define new properties for your prototype rule. You can also edit the existing properties.

When you click on it, a small popup appears:

The popup contains in the center a list of currently defined properties, displaying their name and expected type.

Editing properties

The edition menu of a property looks like the following:

Exporting to an XML rule

The little export icon next to the gear icon opens a menu to export your rule. This menu lets you fill-in the metadata necessary for an XPath rule to be included in a ruleset.

Rule export demo

Testing a rule

PMD has its own XML format to describe rule tests and execute them using our test framework. The designer includes a test editor, which allows you to edit such files or create a new one directly as you edit the rule. This is what the panel left of the XPath expression area is for.

See also the test framework documentation.

Testing model

A rule test describes

When executing a test, the rule is run on the source with the given configuration, then the violations it finds are compared to the expected ones.

Adding tests

Tests can be added in one of four ways:

Test import demo

Test status

In the designer, the test panel is a list of test cases. Their status (passing, failing, error, unknown) is color coded.

Test status color coding examples

All tests passing (green):

A failing test (orange):

Loading a test case

Each test has a piece of source, which you can edit independently of the others, when the test is loaded in the editor. Additional rule configuration options can be chosen when the test is loaded.

Loading is done with the Load button:

Test loading demo

Only one test case may be loaded at a time. If the loaded test is unloaded, the editor reverts back to the state it had before the first test case was loaded.

Editing a loaded test case

When a test is loaded, the source you edit in the code area is the source of the test. Changes are independent from other tests, and from the piece of source that was previously in the editor.

When a test is loaded, an additional toolbar shows up at the top of the code area:

Expected violations

The “Expected violations” button is used to add or edit the expected violations.

Initially the list of violations is empty. You can add violations by dragging and dropping nodes onto the button or its popup, from any control that displays nodes. For example:

Adding a violation demo

Test case rule configuration

Rule properties can be configured for each test case independently using the “Property mapping” button. For example:

Test rule property demo

This configuration will be used when executing the test to check its status.

Exporting tests

When you’re done editing tests, it’s a good idea to save the test file to an XML file. Exporting is done using the “Export” button above the list of test cases:

Test export demo

Note that the exported file does not contain any information about the rule. The rule must be in a ruleset file somewhere else.

If you want to use PMD’s test framework to use the test file in your build, please refer to the conventions explained in the test framework documentation.


RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue

Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo

HTML: 3.2 | Encoding: UTF-8 | Version: 0.7.4