Somewhat cool ! Right ? Checkout the examples: https://azr.github.io/protoc-gen-htmltemplate/
Every time you change a type: the html code for displaying it is generated according to fields.
- For form it generates
<input>fields surrounded by bootstrap form divs. Profile.ID example:
<div class="form-group Profile">
<label for="ID">ID</label>
<input class="form-control ID" id="ID" name="ID" type=number step=1 value="{{ID}}" >
</div>
- For table headers,
<th>FieldName</th>are generated. - For table content,
<td>{{FieldName}}</td>are generated.
Check the .js files in the example dir to see the generated code.
run go get github.com/azr/protoc-gen-htmltemplate
If your golang is correctly set up you will now have the command protoc-gen-htmltemplate.
If it's the case, then installation went fine.
protoc protos/*.proto \
--htmltemplate_out=${ADMIN_DIR}/templates/
Checkout the example !
This line particularly:
var userFormRendered = Mustache.render( templates.Profile.form, {ID: 42}, templates.Profile.formIncludes() );
$("#user-form").html(userFormRendered);
The golang generation code is quick and dirty and the generated js is pretty simple.
- There can be only one level of nesting for a type
- bytes and groups are ignored
- only tested with proto3
I define a lot of things using gRPC. I don't like doing nor maintaining html/javascript/css & I need an admin console that is mostly made of replaceable tools. So I figured generating the most I could from the actual protobuf would make my life much better and easier. It's easy to generate communication and entity files in js from protobuf to execute CRUD. Now I just need to tie things together.
I still had to make some choice though. The project has to be hype resistant and generate boilerplate code so it never gets in the way, or the least possible.
-> Searched "best template engine" and got mustache.github.io
-> Searched "best css framework" and got getbootstrap.com
So the code generated is mustache templates files Forms have bootstrap 4 structure and class names. Every entity has it's own class name taken from entity/field name itself too.
PRs are welcome !
The go library for parsing protobuf is maintained by someone else. This library allows me to just decide how things are dumped and not care about parsing.
In short: from a .proto file defining your entity and API calls, generate the code that will do the communication in any language you like: js, go, c++, c#, java, python, etc.
Yeah but next time you run the command the files will be replaced.