zkry / glo-gen

Go code generator using Clojure data literals

glo-gen: Go code generation using AST written in Hiccup

glo-gen is a library for generating Go code using Hiccup syntax. The data reader is working but the exact syntax has not been finalized. The Go to Hiccup parser is in progress.

Motivation

This library was created to allow the generation of complex Go code using Clojure data literals. Most code generation is done using templates. I wanted to make generating Go code as easy as generating HTML Hiccup makes it. A simple program can be expressed as follows.

[:package {:name "main"}
                 [:import "fmt" "time"]
                 [:func#main
                  (for [[path ret] {"/go" 10
                                    "/up" 20
                                    "/seven" 7}]
                    [:http.HandleFunc path [:func {:args [[:w :http.ResponseWriter]
                                                          [:r :*http.Request]]}
                                            [:fmt.Fprintf :w "%d" ret]]])
                  [:fmt.Println "The time is" [:time.Now]]
                  [:log.Fatal [:http.ListenAndServe ":8080" nil]]]]

Handling Go AST this way allows you to create intricate functions for code generation. Consider the following function which defines i many nested for loops and places body in the very middle:

(defn nested-for [i body]
  (if (zero? i)
    body
    (let [temp-var (gen-variable-name)]
      [:for {:init [:= temp-var 0]
             :cond [:<= temp-var 100]
             :iter [:++ temp-var]}
       (nested-for (dec i) body)])))

Project status

This project is in the exploration phase and the Hiccup API hasn't been finalized.