Jostraca is a general purpose code generation toolkit for software developers. Code generation helps save you time and effort by reducing redundancy and drudge work. Code generation can be thought of as programming by example. Show the computer an example of what you want, and it does the rest.

Jostraca generates code using the Java Server Pages syntax. However this syntax can be used with any language. Jostraca comes preconfigured for Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Jython, Ruby, Rebol and C, with more to come.

Getting Started

First, download and install Jostraca. Then follow the step-by-step introduction.

Follow the tutorials and the examples to learn about practical applications and advanced uses of Jostraca. The manual provides a detailed description of Jostraca and the reference section is a concise listing of configuration parameters and template elements.

License

Jostraca is made available under the GNU General Public License. That means that your rights as a developer are protected and guaranteed. This is not a proprietary framework and you are not forced to use particular tools or methodologies beyond the essentials of the system. If you don't like the way Jostraca does something, you can change it. If there are bugs, you can fix them. (All such changes are welcome and encouraged. Please send them to info@jostraca.org).

The code you generate using Jostraca is entirely your own. The quality and layout of the code is something you determine - there is no bloated IDE to impose a design or style. You can use any technology you like in any way you like.

Credits

As Frederick Brooks said, it takes ten times as much effort to make a programming product as it takes to make a simple program. Jostraca would not be possible without the efforts of many individuals and open source projects. Find out who they are.

31 May 2006: Jostraca 0.4.1 Released!

There are two big new things for this release. First, Jostraca now has an Eclipse plugin: CodeGenClipse. Second, Jostraca now supports JavaScript templates (using Rhino).

And of course there's a load of bug-fixes and a few minor tweaks and improvements.

Since this is a point release, all existing 0.4 version templates should work just fine. If not, let me know: richard@jostraca.org.

By the way, if you're looking for a funky alternative to XSLT, you should check out the templates/src/std/xml/easyxml.jtm template in the distribution. It's all very alpha, but I use it to create the reference documentation for Ricebridge components, and it works rather nicely.

Richard Rodger

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