Building the BOUML API JAR

By: António Casqueiro | Published: 2008/04/06

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Introduction

A month ago I had the need to draw some class diagrams, in order to increase the learning speed of the domain model of the system that in currently working on.
I searched for a tool with the following features:

Lightweight, so that I don't get frustrated with the slow speed when I'm drawing or viewing the class diagrams
Cross-platform, so I can share my work with the Windows and Linux lovers

I was also looking for a tool with a public API, so I could reverse engineering the domain model and generate custom class diagrams.
I found BOUML!
It seem the best, but I could not find a link to download the API.

Since, the program allows me to do forward engineering, I decided to create an API JAR, and this is the tutorial that I wish to share with the whole World :)

Requirements

JDK 1.5 or higher (tested with JDK 1.6.0_03)
BOUML (tested with version 4.2)

Building the BOUML API JAR, step by step

Open the "Empty Project", by selecting on the menu "Project->Open"
In Kubunto the project is located at "/usr/lib/bouml/empty/"
After opening the project, BOUML forces it to be saved
Save it in some directory (ex: /home/<my_home>/temp/) and name the project "bouml_api".
Setup the directory where the source of the classes will be generated
- Right-click the project root, and select the "Edit generation settings" option
- Go to the "Directory" tab and type in the textfield "java root dir" the name of the directory where the files will be stored.
Generate the API
- Right-click the project root, and select the "Generate"->"Java" option.
  The API files will be generated:
Build the JAR file
- Open a terminal/console
- Change the current directory to the one where the files were generated
```
cd /home/<my_home>/temp/bouml_jar
```
- Move the "Main.java" plug-out template file to another directory
```
mv Main.java ..
```
- Compile
```
javac *.java
```
- Create the JAR with the source and class files
```
jar cvf bouml-api.jar *
```

Notes

The default BOUML API classes are not inside a package
If you want them in the "bouml" package, after setting up the "java root dir", do the following:
1. Save the project.
2. Re-open the project, because there seems to be a bug in BOUML that prevents the user from selecting the package for the classes before doing this step.
3. For each package "API BASE"+"Settings"+"Com"+"Diagram" and "API USER"+"Diagram", choose "bouml" as the java package.
When you compile the BOUML API outside the default package, some errors occur. Thats because the generated files have the package definition before the import one.
So the files must be fixed manually in order to build successfully.

Steps to generate the BOUML API JAR inside a package
- Open a terminal/console
- Change the current directory to the one where the files were generated
```
cd /home/<my_home>/temp/bouml_jar
```
- Move the "Main.java" plug-out template file to another directory
```
mv Main.java ..
```
- Fix package. In BOUML version 4.3.1 the files are:
  - CppSettings.java
  - IdlSettings.java
  - JavaSettings.java
  - UmlBaseClass.java
  - UmlBaseItem.java
  - UmlCom.java
- Compile
```
javac *.java
```
- Create directory for the package
```
mkdir bouml
```
- Move the classes to the package directory
```
mv *.* bouml/
```
- Create the JAR with the source and class files
```
jar cvf bouml-api.jar *
```
A small incomplete example of use the BOUML API:
- Class "Main.java"
- Class "BoumlControl.java" takes advantage of the BOUML API to import classes and their relations
Attention: Building a JAR for the BOUML API is not the standard way of developing plug-outs.
The author of BOUML recommend developing then inside BOUML.
However, if you do that, you will not take advantage of the autocomplete and debugging features of an IDE like Eclipse.

Thanks to

Bruno Pagès, for developing BOUML
My family for spending some weekends and holidays without me...