A source code based model to generate GUI: GUI generation based on source code with declarative language extensions

摘要

Due to data-driven application nature and its increasing complexity, developing its user interface can be arepetitive and time-consuming activity. Consequently, developers tend to focus more on the user interfaceaspects and less on business related code. In this paper, we present an alternative approach to graphical userinterface development for data-driven applications, where the key concept is the generation of concrete graphicaluser interface from a source code based model. The model includes the original source code metadataand non-intrusive declarative language extensions that describes the user interface structure. Some ObjectRelational Mapping tools already use a similar concept to handle interoperability between the data layer andthe business layer. Our approach applies the same concept to handle business and presentation layer interoperability.Also, concrete user interface implementation will be delegated to specialized software packages,developed by external entities, that provide complete graphical user interfaces services to the application.When applying our approach, we expect faster graphical user interface development, allowing developers torefocus on the source code and concentrate their efforts on application core logic.