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European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications

ECMFA 2016: Modelling Foundations and Applications pp 205–216Cite as

Metamodeling vs Metaprogramming: A Case Study on Developing Client Libraries for REST APIs

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9764))

Abstract

Web-services with REST APIs comprise the majority of the programmable web. To access these APIs more safely and conveniently, language specific client libraries can hide REST details behind regular programming language idioms. Manually building such libraries is straightforward, but tedious and error prone. Fortunately, model-based development provides different methods to automate their development. In this paper, we present our experiences with two opposing approaches to describe existing REST APIs and to generate type-safe client side Java libraries from these descriptions. First, we use an EMF-metamodel and a code generator (external DSL). Secondly, we use the Java compatible language Xtend and its metaprogramming mechanism active annotations, which allows us to alter the semantics of existing Xtend constructs to describe REST APIs within Xtend (internal DSL). Furthermore, we present related approaches and discuss our findings comparatively.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Markus Scheidgen & Frederik Marticke

  2. Typefox GmbH, Kiel, Germany

    Sven Efftinge

Authors
  1. Markus Scheidgen
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  2. Sven Efftinge
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  3. Frederik Marticke
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Markus Scheidgen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Andrzej Wąsowski

  2. Volvo Group Trucks Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Henrik Lönn

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Scheidgen, M., Efftinge, S., Marticke, F. (2016). Metamodeling vs Metaprogramming: A Case Study on Developing Client Libraries for REST APIs. In: Wąsowski, A., Lönn, H. (eds) Modelling Foundations and Applications. ECMFA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9764. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42061-5_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42061-5_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42060-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42061-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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