In ANTLR 3, how do I generate a lexer (and parser) at runtime instead of ahead of time?

Question

I want to generate an antlr lexer at runtime -- that is, generate the grammar and from the grammar generate the lexer class, and its supporting bits at runtime. I am happy to feed it into the the java compiler, which is accessible at runtime.

Answer 1

Here's a quick and dirty way to:

1. generate a combined (!) ANTLR grammar .g file given a String as grammar-source,
2. and create a Parser & Lexer from this .g file,
3. compile the these Parser & Lexer .java files,
4. create instances of the Parser & Lexer classes and invoke the entry point of the parser.

Main.java

import java.io.*;
import javax.tools.*;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import org.antlr.runtime.*;
import org.antlr.Tool;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        // The grammar which echos the parsed characters to theconsole,
        // skipping any white space chars.
        final String grammar =
                "grammar T;                                                  \n" +
                "                                                            \n" +
                "parse                                                       \n" +
                "  :  (ANY {System.out.println(\"ANY=\" + $ANY.text);})* EOF \n" +
                "  ;                                                         \n" +
                "                                                            \n" +
                "SPACE                                                       \n" +
                "  :  (' ' | '\\t' | '\\r' | '\\n') {skip();}                \n" +
                "  ;                                                         \n" +
                "                                                            \n" +
                "ANY                                                         \n" +
                "  :  .                                                      \n" +
                "  ;                                                           ";
        final String grammarName = "T";
        final String entryPoint = "parse";

        // 1 - Write the `.g` grammar file to disk.
        Writer out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(new File(grammarName + ".g")));
        out.write(grammar);
        out.close();

        // 2 - Generate the lexer and parser.
        Tool tool = new Tool(new String[]{grammarName + ".g"});
        tool.process();

        // 3 - Compile the lexer and parser.
        JavaCompiler compiler = ToolProvider.getSystemJavaCompiler();
        compiler.run(null, System.out, System.err, "-sourcepath", "", grammarName + "Lexer.java");
        compiler.run(null, System.out, System.err, "-sourcepath", "", grammarName + "Parser.java");

        // 4 - Parse the command line parameter using the dynamically created lexer and 
        //     parser with a bit of reflection Voodoo :)
        Lexer lexer = (Lexer)Class.forName(grammarName + "Lexer").newInstance();
        lexer.setCharStream(new ANTLRStringStream(args[0]));
        CommonTokenStream tokens = new CommonTokenStream(lexer);
        Class<?> parserClass = Class.forName(grammarName + "Parser");
        Constructor parserCTor = parserClass.getConstructor(TokenStream.class);
        Parser parser = (Parser)parserCTor.newInstance(tokens);
        Method entryPointMethod = parserClass.getMethod(entryPoint);
        entryPointMethod.invoke(parser);
    }
}

Which, after compiling and running it like this (on *nix):

java -cp .:antlr-3.2.jar Main "a b    c"

or on Windows

java -cp .;antlr-3.2.jar Main "a b    c"

, produces the following output:

ANY=a
ANY=b
ANY=c

Answer 2

You'll have to use org.antlr.Tool() class to get it working.

You can check ANTLRWorks source code on github to have an idea how to use it, specifically the generate() method here:

ErrorListener el = ErrorListener.getThreadInstance();
ErrorManager.setErrorListener(el);

String[] params;
if(debug)
    params = new String[] { "-debug", "-o", getOutputPath(), "-lib", window.getFileFolder(), window.getFilePath() };
else
    params = new String[] { "-o", getOutputPath(), "-lib", window.getFileFolder(), window.getFilePath() };

new File(getOutputPath()).mkdirs();

Tool antlr = new Tool(Utils.concat(params, AWPrefs.getANTLR3Options()));
antlr.process();

boolean success = !el.hasErrors();
if(success) {
    dateOfModificationOnDisk = window.getDocument().getDateOfModificationOnDisk();
}
lastError = el.getFirstErrorMessage();
el.clear();
ErrorManager.removeErrorListener();
return success;

Answer 3

Have you tried calling org.antlr.Tool.main(String[]) with an appropriate String[] argument?

If that's too cumbersome, you could reverse engineer the Tool class (source code) to figure out how it works, and how to do the specific tasks you need to do.