Ceylon code generation (for ceylon.net.http.client/server)

[ePaul]

There should be code generators which generate

• Ceylon model classes
• An Ceylon API client based on ceylon.net.http.client.
• An Ceylon API server based on ceylon.net.http.server.
• (optionally, maybe later) clients/servers for other Ceylon web frameworks (i.e. one for use on the JS side, as ceylon.net is JVM-only).

[ePaul]

I already started with the model classes, as well as JSON serialization/deserialization (as Jackson seems to have problems with the Ceylon base types like Integer and Character).

→ Diff (not yet ready for a pull request, I think.)

Some questions:

• I created some Ceylon helper classes/functions for JSON parsing and JSON formatting.

  Currently those are generated with the models (in a helper package) and called from the models. Is this the way to go, or should I preferably create a separate Ceylon module and import that?

• I removed all the client/server stuff to concentrate on the models first. Is this a useful way to go generally? Can I inherit the generic stuff when later generating the client or server code (i.e. generating stuff for operations? (Currently it looks like related languages (like "java", "springmvc", "jax-rs") all have their own templates?)

[wing328]

@ePaul thanks for contributing the Ceylon code generator 🍺

Regarding helper classes/functions, both approaches are fine with me. I would suggest you start with the helper package approach and refactor later if people want to use these helper functions/classes in a standalone module.

About concentrating on models first, I totally agree with that approach as that's what I did for the Go code generator.

If you need any help with the community (testing, debugging, etc), let us know any time.