This grade plugin has been developed in order to make the usage of FlatBufferseasier. Big thanks to @nabil_hachicha for his talk at DroidCon London 2014.

About

FlatBuffers format has been shown to give better results than JSON parsing. For more details about it read this article. For a more detailed introduction on how to use FlatBuffers you can have a look at this article.

You may notice that the java files generation task could be difficult if there are frequent changes to the schema while developing. A solution for continuous generation of the java classes is needed. We have integrated the continuos generation of java file with the grade plugin. FlatBuffer java classes are generated on every build.

Note: We chose not to use incremental build for this plugin as the exact location of output directories is not known due to name space declarations in the schema files.

Setup

1. Clone the FlatBufferrepository.
2. Open the Xcode project: build/Xcode/FlatBuffers.xcodeproj. Alternatively you can generate your flatc executable using any other way (or if you are not using a Mac) as described here.
3. Run the project using the Play Button or ⌘ + R, you will find the flatc executable in the project root directory.
4. Copy the java flatbuffer files in your project from [here] (https://github.com/google/flatbuffers/tree/master/java/com/google/flatbuffers) OR copy the jar file from here to your libs folder OR generate the jar file yourself by running mvn install in the flatbuffers/java directory.
5. Create a schema file for your project, you can find information on how to create here.
6. Use the plugin. Change the schema and see the effect. Enjoy!

Usage

flatbuffer-gradle-plugin has been uploaded on bintray and can be used as follows:

Gradle:

repositories {
    maven {
        url  "http://dl.bintray.com/ophio/maven" 
    }
}
dependencies {
        classpath 'in.co.ophio:flatbuffer-gradle-plugin:0.1.1'
    }
    

To apply the plugin: apply plugin: 'flatbuffer-gradle-plugin'

Use the flatbuffer closure as follows :

flatbuffer {
    flatcPath = "${project.rootDir}"  // (optional, default location project root directory)
    inputFileNames = ["schema1.fbs", "schema2.fbs"]
    inputFilePath = ""${project.rootDir}"" // (optional, default location project root directory)
    outputDirPath = "${projectDir}/src/main/java"
}

• flatcPath: (optional, defaults to the project root Directory) path to the flatc executable.
• inputFilePath: (optional, defaults to the project root Directory) path to input schema file.
• inputFileName: array of the names of the schema files
• outputDirPath: directory where you want your java classes to get generated.

Uploading the plugin:

Upload on maven local :

cd plugin; ../gradlew clean uploadArchives

Upload on bintray (assuming you have a bintray.properties file in the {rootDirectory}/plugin directory) :

cd plugin; ../gradlew clean build bintrayUpload

Licence Information

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Ophio

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.