type safe templating

Overview

Within a Java program, each Jamon template is represented as an instance of a class specific to that template. In order for your program to compile, Jamon templates need to be translated into Java source classes, and those generated Java sources need to be included in the build of your project.

Assumptions

Building with Maven

The Jamon primary repository is at http://maven.jamon.org/. All Jamon artifacts (aside from Eclipse plugins) are deployed there. Generally, there are three sections of your pom.xml that will need to be configured.

1. Plugin repository

<pluginRepositories>
    ...
    <pluginRepository>
        <id>jamon plugin</id>
        <name>jamon plugin</name>
        <url>http://maven.jamon.org/</url>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </snapshots>
    </pluginRepository>
    ...
</pluginRepositories>

2. General dependency repository

  <repositories>
    ...
    <repository>
      <id>jamon</id>
      <name>jamon primary repository</name>
      <layout>default</layout>
      <url>http://maven.jamon.org</url>
      <snapshots>
        <enabled>false</enabled>
      </snapshots>
    </repository>
    ...
  </repositories>

3. Compile and runtime dependency

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <dependency>
      <group>org.jamon</group>
      <artifactId>jamon-runtime</artifactId>
      <version>2.3.0</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

4. Hook into project build lifecycle

<build>
    <plugins>
        ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.jamon</groupId>
        <artifactId>jamon-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>generate-sources</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>translate</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
        ...
    </plugins>
</build>

5. (Optional) Hook into Eclipse

Yes, this is far from optimal. Add the following to the plugins section, ensuring the templateSourceDir and templateOutputDir match your project: 
  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-eclipse-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <additionalProjectnatures>
        <projectnature>org.jamon.project.jamonnature</projectnature>
      </additionalProjectnatures>
      <buildcommands>
        <buildcommand>org.jamon.project.templateBuilder</buildcommand>
        <buildcommand>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javabuilder</buildcommand>
        <buildcommand>org.jamon.project.markerUpdater</buildcommand>
      </buildcommands>
      <additionalConfig>
       	<file>
       			<name>.settings/org.jamon.prefs</name>
       			<content># now 
eclipse.preferences.version=1
templateSourceDir=templates
templateOutputDir=tsrc
</content>
        </file>
      </additionalConfig>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>

Customizing the plugin

You can change the location where the plugin looks for template sources and the locaiton where it generates Java files by specifying the properties for jamon.template.src and jamon.template.output in each execution section above. For example, to root your template sources at src/main/jamon and generate Java sources into src/gen, your execution section would look like: 
<build>
    <plugins>
        ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.jamon</groupId>
        <artifactId>jamon-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>generate-sources</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>translate</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
               <templateSourceDir>src/main/jamon</templateSourceDir>
               <templateOutputDir>src/gen</templateOutputDir>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
        ...
    </plugins>
</build>