New GtkTester project

In my recent private developments, I need to create Gtk+ widgets libraries, and test them before use them in applications.

There are plenty of efforts to provide automated GUI testing, this is another one working in my case, I would like to share. It is written in Vala, is a GTK+ library with just one top window, you can attach your widget to test, can add test cases, check status and finish by calling asserts. Feel free to ask any thing you need or add issues, in order to improve it.

Sorry if the name is too GTKish and some one would like to change it to avoid any “Official Backup from GNOME”, which is not the case.

Hope to improve this library, adding more documentation in order to help others to use it, if they found useful.

Enjoy it at GitHub.

GXml 0.14 Released

New version of GXml is in place.

No great changes over DOM4 and previous implementations was made. So you can sleep, because your application will run, may be, just with few changes.

A new more powerful, less footprint and good performance implementation of DOM4 has arrived. It is prefixed Gom. This new implementation will be used for all my projects now and on. It provides better implementation of namespaces and avoids using libxml2 tree internally.

Future plans may involve to implement a kind of Gee.Promise objects, in order to parse XML in parallel or to parse large files. Ideas are welcome.

More improvements on XSD parser will come, to provide good API to access this kind of documents; even better, validate your XML files, a feature just partially implemented in libxml2.

I would like to see if some one wants to help porting W3C XPath or XQuery specification using GOM and DOM4, this will be easy with current infrastructure.

GSVG will be ported to GOM, because GOM was inspired by W3C API specification for SVG requirement of DOM4. For now GSVG will be for XML parsing and editing, bu may in the future some one wants to add Cairo rendering and help to create next GNOME canvas using SVG format.

I would like help to port LibreSCL to GOM, I can pay for.

Vala 1.0?

Yes is time to consider a Vala 1.0 release. Vala 0.34 code generator and bindings support LTS versions of GTK+ 3.22 and GLib 2.50. Next stable version of GTK+ will be 4.0 and GLib 2.x, but they have to traverse through 3.9x versions and any GLib 2.x on the way. Reaching that point we can consider Vala 2.0 release.

Traditionally a new Vala version is released along with GLib and GTK+, with bindings updates, from them and other projects. Some times, is necessary to change some Vala syntax or implementations, like threats, in order to be in sync with current GLib/GObject/GIO features. Because this, may we can consider to increase Vala API each stable version of GTK+.

In order to reach Vala 1.0, may we should identify stoppers bugs before to go. Some of them can be related to GNOME Builder, but may is not a real problem is you don’t use it for Vala development. I really would like to file, find and send patches for some of them, producing warnings at C compilation, for a better experience.

A road map could be stated at Vala’s Wiki, in order to track that stopper bugs/features to fix/implement before 1.0 release. This will mark a good stand point for any developer using Vala.

Debian is around corner. It supply Vala 0.34, then it should be considered, and backport fixes, as a LTS version.

Vala is not a Programming Language

Vala provides you a way to write C/GObject/GInterface code using a different syntax. Vala doesn’t require to develop a “core library” in order to provide its features. Its “compiler” is not a compiler, is a C code generator.

Vala can’t be compared with Rust, Go, Python, Java or C#, all of them provide their own “core library” in order to provide most of their features, allows you to create modules (like a library) to extend the language for their users consume. Their core generally is written in C, for very basic features, but almost in the language itself.

Vala is different in many different ways to other real programming languages. Vala can’t exists without GLib and GObject. It just wraps that libraries to provide its Object Oriented syntax. It doesn’t provides any feature by it self, just a syntax to use the ones already present in above libraries, a part to provide some convenient methods to reduce coding boilerplate.

GLib, GIO and GObject are C libraries. They are the basis for GNOME, GNOME Shell and any other application using GNOME technologies. GTK+ and any library or application using it, relays on above libraries, they can’t exists without them. VMWare and LibreOffice consume GTK+ and so GLib/GObject.

Vala provides mechanism to create bindings. They are conventions to help Vala’s code generator to produce correct C code to consume any other, apart of GLib/GObject, libraries. It can do better job if the library use GObject.

Vala is not a Language: This is a conclusion after the On Vala article, comparing Vala’s repository’s activity with other real languages.

May we need to add to Vala’s activity, all commits and developers on GLib, GObject, GTK+ and GObject Introspection, because they are, indirectly, supporters of Vala’s features and usefulness; may be we need to consider all other libraries’ activity, like libsoup, libgda, and any other one supporting GObject Introspection, because they can be consumed by Vala; this is specially true if we consider their support to generate, automatically, Vala bindings.

Considering all of these, if Vala was a real language: it can be considered to be one with a very reach, secure and stable “core”, with years of development behind; with a reach set of other libraries for your use, as a developer, to choose from. But again: Vala is not a Programming Language.

Vala is multiplatform as long as its Code Generator and their libraries it depends on, or can bind, are present in your target platform: Windows and OS X, are just examples.

May is time to update Vala’s README and vala.doap at git.gnome.org, in order to avoid missunderstandings.

GXml 0.13.90 Released

With lot of work to do on XSD, but certainly happy to see GXml.Gom* classes taking shape, fixed lot of bugs since last 0.13.2 and starting to port some projects to this new version, I hope to soon release 0.14, just after most translation are in place.

This new version, will provide a better supported XML GObject wrapped, using DOM4 API and initials of other technologies like XPath and XSD.

Hope some one takes some time to implement XPath recent W3C specification and complete XSD support implementation. May be this will be a good projects for Google Summer of Code 2017.

On the process, I’ll try to implement W3C SVG API using GXml.Gom* classes, to provide a fully supported XML/SVG API using GObject libraries, and all other languages supported by GObject Introspection.

Future GXml versions, can include:

  • Cleanup more interfaces/classes no useful any more, like TNode derived classes and other non DOM4 compliant interfaces. This will reduce number of classes to choose from, while recommend way will be on GNode and GomNode derived classes.
  • Improve XSD support
  • Explore how to manage large XML files
  • Improve XPath support
  • Explore XQuery

May be other ideas, from GXml users.

GInterface and GXml

I love GInterface definitions, more in Vala, because they are clean an easy to describe API. Interfaces are the way W3C defines their specifications, like SVG and DOM4.

Vala interfaces definition are realy close to be a copy and paste from W3C’s specification definitions. With some, well a bit, work, you can transform them in usable GObject Interfaces definitions.

GXml take DOM4 interfaces and implement them, using a set of instantiable classes.

GXml provides a GObject to XML and back serialization framework, allowing you to define your own classes and how you want your data is represented in XML.

In order to read back your information, GXml needs to create, on-the-fly, instances of your classes, this means you need GObject ones no GInterface.

Starting to implement XSD support in GXml, I’ve created a set of interfaces to interpret W3C specification, this is really helpful, but unusable when you need to instantiate an object it is declared as a Interface. For example, if you have an interface A and it has a property of type B, but at the same time B is a GInterface, you can’t implement A and have an instantiable object from B: I mean, using g_object_new().

Because GXml engine, requires instantiable objects, to create new element nodes when found, using a GObject type to parse attributes to properties, for example, I ended creating a set of interfaces, to help me design an clean API, makes room for other implementations engines, but creating a new classes that will implement XSD interfaces having its own “mirror” properties.

This is, while GXml.XsdSchema have a GXml.XsdListSimpleTypes property to access to all simple type definitions, GXml.GomXsdSchema will have two properties with same purpose: a GXml.GomXsdListSimpleTypes property AND a property of type GXml.XsdListSimpleTypes to fully implement GXml.XsdSchema. Second one, will mirror the first. These is more work to implement an interface but keeps your classes’ properties instantiable, and your users can choose to use just GXml.XsdSchema interfaces API to access your class implementation, keeping open to use different implementations.

Best of all, with GXml implementation of XML to GObject, more clearly using GXml.Gom* classes, you will have access to *all* nodes, attributes and child ones found in an XML file, without loose them in the process of de-serializing back to your class instance.

GXml and XSD

While on the road to release GXml 0.14, I started to port some of my projects to new GXml.Gom* objects, in order to take advantage on speed and reduced memory footprint.

In the process, my library requires to define a large set of strings to select on for an element’s attribute. This is, PostalCode number. They are defined as XSD enumeration in a SimpleType.

At the begining, I started to define an array to add to GXml.GomArrayString[1], but found they are too many to maintain and error prone.

Then I desired to take a look at W3C Schema Specification and started to define a new GXml.Xsd* interfaces and a new GXml.GomXsd* classes to implement them. The result is: GXml.GomXsdArrayString [1], a new class taking an XSD file, to search a SimpleType definition and parse all enumerations, add them to an array of strings you can choose or validate your property value from.

These are the first steps in the way to get XSD support in GXml. While, GXml.Xsd* interfaces are unstable, and will continue this way after 0.14 release, will open new opportunities to any one consuming XSD definitions.

May be in the future, some one can use this API to create an XSD to Vala (or C) code GObject classes.

May other wants to help adding more object definitions from XSD specification in order to get patterns and other restriction from schema definitions, and improve data handling and validation.

[1] GXml.GomCollections definitions

[2] GXml.Schema definitions and GXml.GomXsd implementations

 

GomDocument: Providing best of two worlds

In upcoming GXml 0.14, there will be a new DOM4 implementation called GomDocument, it along with GomElement and GomObject, provides support to serialize or deserialize GObject object to or from XML files.

I’ve made initial measures about what is the performance of GomDocument against other implementations in GXml: GDocument and TDocument, first one is a libxml2 implementation with bidings on GObject and DOM4 while last one is a pure GObject implementation with no support (yet?) of DOM4.

In performance test, we use a 3.5 MB file with a lot of nodes, read it and then create an internal in memory XML tree and then fill out your GObject class properties, we measure required time to deserialize and then time to write it back to an XML file.

We can see GDocument taking a lot of time on deserialize, because it uses libxml2  to create a tree and GXml.SerializableObjectModel to fill out your GObject class. Serialize is very competitive, because all implementations, use almost same engine: direct access to libxml2 by xmlWriter.

GomDocument, is very competitive if compared to TDocument, but can perform much better than GDocument.

Please note that GomDocument time to write to disk is not available, because serialization and deserialization is make in one go, then may be we case reduce this time (should be the same from others  because the file is loaded in memory before to read) and then this makes GomDocument to perform even better!!

On memory usage, TDocument requires much more memory and GDocument is the one to defeat. GomDocument now requires almost same memory than GDocument.

Conclusion

GomDocument is the way to go on Serialization framework for GXml. These results will help LibreSCL, to provide a very competitive serialization/deserialization framework and consider to create a WEB based application using GObject Introspection and Python to access very large files, without requiring lot of memory resources and may be a good response time on reading.

I’m starting to stabilize GXml to release 0.14 as soon as I can found most bugs on parse XML files. GXml’s GomDocument have a set of errors detection, based on DOM4, not present in other GXml implementations, making it more sensitive to some files and may not affecting (or detected) by libxml2, for example.

GXml 0.13.1 Released

Now you can convert your GObject classes in XML nodes. This is, you can read and write XML trees directly to object classes’ properties, from basic types to complex like object properties, representing XML element’s attributes, to other child elements, while you can use collection of child nodes.

This has been easiest to implement than GXml.SerializableObjectModel, which requires you to read an XML tree and then translate to your object properties. This should be slower than new GOM implementation included in this release.

Next, should be to test it in a real project like GSVG and make some performance tests.

These are old results of GDocument vs TwDocument, used by SerializableObjectModel, to serialize and deserialize large files (3.1MB). In future articles, hope to attach this GomDocument performance and resources comparations with all existing implementations in GXml.

gvstw-memory

gvstw-time

GXml: Objects and Collections to XML and back

Today I’ve finished to push last implementation for GXml GOM, to allow write, to XML:

  • Object Properties, as child nodes of current class
  • Object Properties, as element’s attributes
  • Object Collection Properties, referencing XML child nodes

Object Properties

In GXml GOM, any GomElement is an XML Element node. If it has GomElement as properties, they will be added as child nodes.

Object Properties as Attributes

If your GObject class implements GomProperty interface, and is a property in your object, it will be translated to an Element attributes with a name and a text value.

For simple types, this means you can control if an attribute is written or not, depending if it is not null. Standard properties, not GObject classes implementing GomProperty, they will be always written with its default value. This is, for example, a boolean will always use false by default.

Using GomProperty, you can define default actions when a property is omitted in XML file.

Complex Object Properties

Some times, your string representation of attributes include more information than just values, like units. In GSVG, you have an attribute like: length=”3.8 cm. You can implement an object with properties for each value component like:

public class Length : Object {

public double value { get; set; }

public UnitsEnum units { get; set; }

}

With GXml GOM, is now possible to implement W3C SVG 1.1 specification interfaces, most objects will be complex properties to be translated to Element’s attributes. Once you implement a way to parse a string representation to your object’s properties and back, you can have GomProperty objects in your GomElement to be de/serialized to attributes.

Collections

GomElement objects are containers, by definition, in DOM4. It can have child nodes of different local names and namespaces.

Once you have a set of different nodes, may you want classify them by their node’s names and for, for example, its id attribute.

GXml GOM, have added a set of basic collection classes, implementing GomCollection interface. ArrayList and HashMap, are classes you can use to access child nodes. All references are to child node’s indexes, no copy or ref-counted objects.

Examples

If you want to see how implement different kind of classes and properties, you can checkout GXml repository Unit Tests.