The EGG

EGG is a development tool for fast and easy realization of XML to plain-text tranformations
EGG is a development tool for easy and fast realization of XML to plain-text transformations.

Where plain-text encompasses every data-format that is not binary, especially source-code or XML-documents.

Egg is similar to XSLT, Velocity or JSP but emphasises source-code generation in a model-driven, generative development-process. Runs on Windows or Unix with Java.

Basically, you can think of EGG as something like an XSLT-processor that transforms XML-input into plain-text output based on a transformation-stylesheet. With EGG this transformation is defined in an EGG-template, that contains the plain-text patterns for the resulting output and the logic for reading and transforming the XML-input.

You can write your transformation logic in Java and all plain-text patterns just as they should look like in the generator-output. You define the control-flow of your generator as a sequence of statements in an imperative way and not rule-based as in XSLT.

EGG reads your generator-template and converts it into a java-class. Then, EGG compiles this generator-class and produces a simple startup-script for your generator. Run this startup-script with a XML-file as input to perform your 'xml-to-text' transformation and to produce your concrete plain-text output.

EGG is worth a try, if you think that:

keeping your data in XML is a good thing to do,

transforming this data should be done automatically,

XSLT is conceptionally fine, but awkward and annoying for more complex transformations.

EGG is made especially for:

generation of source-code,

supporting generative programming and

integration in an iterative software-development process.

EGG is easy, if you know:

how to write Java-programs,

how to write XML-documents and

some basic ideas of XPATH.

Requirements:

Java JDK-1.2 and above

Free Download ( 1.5 MB )