Writing a Macro

Version 11.1 by Vincent Massol on 2011/10/27 11:53

This tutorial explains how to create an XWiki Rendering Macro in Java

Pre-requisites:

  • You must be using JDK 1.5 or above.
  • You must be using XWiki Rendering 3.0 or above.
  • (optional) You need to have Maven installed if you want to use the Maven Archetype we're offering to easily create Macro projects using Maven.
  • You should understand XWiki's Rendering Architecture.

General Principles

Start by understanding the Macro execution process.

In order to implement a new Macro you'll need to write 2 classes:

  • One that is a pure Java Bean and that represents the parameters allowed for that macro, including mandatory parameters, default values, parameter descriptions. An intance of this class will be automagically populated when the user calls the macro in wiki syntax.
  • Another one that is the Macro itself. This class should implement the Macro interface. However we recommend extending AbstractMacro which does some heavy lifting for you. By doing so you'll only have to implement 2 methods:
    /**
     * @return true if the macro can be inserted in some existing content such as a paragraph, a list item etc. For
     *         example if I have <code>== hello {{velocity}}world{{/velocity}}</code> then the Velocity macro must
     *         support the inline mode and not generate a paragraph.
     */

    boolean supportsInlineMode();

    /**
     * @param parameters the macro parameters in the form of a bean defined by the {@link Macro} implementation
     * @param content the content of the macro
     * @param context the context of the macros transformation process
     * @return the result of the macro execution as a list of Block elements
     * @throws MacroExecutionException error when executing the macro
     */

    List<Block> execute(P parameters, String content, MacroTransformationContext context)
       throws MacroExecutionException;

Then you'll need to register your Macro class with the Component Manager so that it can be called from a wiki page. You register with a Macro.class role and a hint corresponding to the macro name. For example if you've registered your macro under the mymacro hint, you'll be able to call:

{{mymacro .../}}

In addition you can register your Macro for all syntaxes or only for a given syntax. In order to register only for a given syntax you must use a hint in the format macroname/syntaxid. For example: mymacro/xwiki/2.0.

Implementing a Macro

Here are detailed steps explaining how you can create a macro and deploy it. 

Creating a Macro using Maven

In order for this job to go as smooth as possible we have created a Maven Archetype to help you create a simple macro module with a single command.

After you've installed Maven, open a shell prompt an type:
mvn archetype:generate

This will list all archetypes available on Maven Central. If instead you wish to directly use the XWiki Rendering Macro Archetype, you can directly type (update the version to use the version you wish to use):

mvn archetype:generate \
  -DarchetypeArtifactId=xwiki-rendering-archetype-macro \
  -DarchetypeGroupId=org.xwiki.rendering \
  -DarchetypeVersion=3.2

Then follow the instructions. For example:

vmassol@tmp $ mvn archetype:generate
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Maven Stub Project (No POM) 1
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] >>> maven-archetype-plugin:2.0:generate (default-cli) @ standalone-pom >>>
[INFO]
[INFO] <<< maven-archetype-plugin:2.0:generate (default-cli) @ standalone-pom <<<
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-archetype-plugin:2.0:generate (default-cli) @ standalone-pom ---
[INFO] Generating project in Interactive mode
[INFO] No archetype defined. Using maven-archetype-quickstart (org.apache.maven.archetypes:maven-archetype-quickstart:1.0)
Choose archetype:
...
466: remote -> org.xwiki.rendering:xwiki-rendering-archetype-macro (Make it easy to create a maven project for creating XWiki Rendering Macros.)
...
Choose a number or apply filter (format: [groupId:]artifactId, case sensitive contains): 143: 466
Choose version:
1: 3.2-milestone-3
2: 3.2-rc-1
3: 3.2
Choose a number: 3:
Define value for property 'groupId': : com.acme
Define value for property 'artifactId': : example
Define value for property 'version':  1.0-SNAPSHOT: :
Define value for property 'package':  com.acme: :
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: com.acme
artifactId: example
version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
package: com.acme
 Y: : Y
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 12.248s
[INFO] Finished at: Fri Mar 11 14:54:46 CET 2011
[INFO] Final Memory: 7M/81M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then go in the created directory (example in our example above) and run mvn install to build your macro.

If you are a XWiki developer or you just want to see more examples of implemented macros, you can check the source code for the Macros in our SCM.

Now, let's take a moment and examine the newly generated project. Navigating in the project's folder, we will see the following structure:

  • pom.xml - the project's POM file.
  • src/main/java/.../ExampleMacroParameters.java - a simple bean representing the Macro's parameters. This bean contains annotations to tell the Macro engine the parameter that are mandatory, the list of allowed values, parameter descriptions, etc.
  • src/main/java/.../internal/ExampleMacro.java - the macro itself.
  • src/main/resources/META-INF/components.txt - the list of component implementations. Since our Macro is a component it needs to be listed there. Each component must have its full name written on a separate line (e.g. com.acme.internal.ExampleMacro).
  • src/test/java/.../IntegrationTests.java - JUnit Test Suite to run rendering tests for the Macro.
  • src/test/resources/example1.test - a test file for testing the Macro. It tests that the macro works when standalone.
  • src/test/resources/example2.test - a test file for testing the Macro. It tests that the macro works when inline.

Macro Code

Here's the content of our generated ExampleMacro.java.

package com.acme.internal;

import javax.inject.Named;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.Arrays;

import org.xwiki.component.annotation.Component;
import org.xwiki.rendering.block.Block;
import org.xwiki.rendering.block.WordBlock;
import org.xwiki.rendering.block.ParagraphBlock;
import org.xwiki.rendering.macro.AbstractMacro;
import org.xwiki.rendering.macro.MacroExecutionException;
import com.acme.ExampleMacroParameters;
import org.xwiki.rendering.transformation.MacroTransformationContext;

/**
 * Example Macro.
 */

@Component
@Named("example")
public class ExampleMacro extends AbstractMacro<ExampleMacroParameters>
{
   /**
     * The description of the macro.
     */

   private static final String DESCRIPTION = "Example Macro";

   /**
     * Create and initialize the descriptor of the macro.
     */

   public ExampleMacro()
   {
       super("Example", DESCRIPTION, ExampleMacroParameters.class);
   }

   /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     *
     * @see org.xwiki.rendering.macro.Macro#execute(Object, String, MacroTransformationContext)
     */

   public List<Block> execute(ExampleMacroParameters parameters, String content, MacroTransformationContext context)
       throws MacroExecutionException
   {
        List<Block> result;

        List<Block> wordBlockAsList = Arrays.<Block>asList(new WordBlock(parameters.getParameter()));

       // Handle both inline mode and standalone mode.
       if (context.isInline()) {
            result = wordBlockAsList;
       } else {
           // Wrap the result in a Paragraph Block since a WordBlock is an inline element and it needs to be
           // inside a standalone block.
           result = Arrays.<Block>asList(new ParagraphBlock(wordBlockAsList));
       }

       return result;
   }

   /**
     * {@inheritDoc}
     *
     * @see org.xwiki.rendering.macro.Macro#supportsInlineMode()
     */

   public boolean supportsInlineMode()
   {
       return true;
   }
}

As explained in the Rendering Architecture, the Macro's execute method returns a list of Blocks. In the case of this simple macro it simply return a Word Block with the value if the parameter parameter (i.e. hello if the macro is called with {{example parameter="hello"/}}).

And here's the ExampleMacroParameters.java file:

package com.acme;

import org.xwiki.properties.annotation.PropertyMandatory;
import org.xwiki.properties.annotation.PropertyDescription;

/**
 * Parameters for the {@link com.acme.internal.ExampleMacro} Macro.
 */

public class ExampleMacroParameters
{
   /**
     * @see {@link #getParameter()}
     */

   private String parameter;

   /**
     * @return the example parameter
     */

   public String getParameter()
   {
       return this.parameter;
   }

   /**
     * @param parameter the example parameter
     */

   @PropertyMandatory
   @PropertyDescription("Example parameter")
   public void setParameter(String parameter)
   {
       this.parameter = parameter;
   }
}

Testing the Macro

The XWiki Rendering system has a pretty advanced Test framework to make it easy to test macros. Here is the test declaration for example1.test:

.runTransformations
.#-----------------------------------------------------
.input|xwiki/2.0
.# Test the macro in standalone mode
.#-----------------------------------------------------
{{example parameter="hello"/}}
.#-----------------------------------------------------
.expect|xhtml/1.0
.#-----------------------------------------------------
<p>hello</p>
.#-----------------------------------------------------
.expect|event/1.0
.#-----------------------------------------------------
beginDocument
beginMacroMarkerStandalone [example] [parameter=hello]
beginParagraph
onWord [hello]
endParagraph
endMacroMarkerStandalone [example] [parameter=hello]
endDocument

This instructs the test framework to execute the macro with the given input and to compare to all specified outputs (defined using the expect keyword). In this example we're inputting XWiki Syntax 2.0 and comparing the result against XHTML 1.0 and against the internal events generated by the parser. These events are the pivot format used internally by the XWiki Rendering system. All the Renderers take those events to generate some output.

Note that the .runTransformations directives simply tells the test framework to execute the Macro Transformation on the XDOM generated by the input.

And here's the second test example2.test, this time testing the macro when used in inline mode:

.runTransformations
.#-----------------------------------------------------
.input|xwiki/2.0
.# Test the macro in inline mode
.#-----------------------------------------------------
This is inline {{example parameter="hello"/}}
.#-----------------------------------------------------
.expect|xhtml/1.0
.#-----------------------------------------------------
<p>This is inline hello</p>
.#-----------------------------------------------------
.expect|event/1.0
.#-----------------------------------------------------
beginDocument
beginParagraph
onWord [This]
onSpace
onWord [is]
onSpace
onWord [inline]
onSpace
beginMacroMarkerInline [example] [parameter=hello]
onWord [hello]
endMacroMarkerInline [example] [parameter=hello]
endParagraph
endDocument

Finally this is how the IntegrationTests.java file looks like:

package com.acme;

import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.xwiki.rendering.test.integration.RenderingTestSuite;

/**
 * Run all tests found in {@code *.test} files located in the classpath. These {@code *.test} files must follow the
 * conventions described in {@link org.xwiki.rendering.test.integration.TestDataParser}.
 */

@RunWith(RenderingTestSuite.class)
public class IntegrationTests
{
}

Deploying the Macro

Now that we have a functioning Macro let's build it and deploy it:

  • To build the macro issue mvn install. This generates a Macro JAR in the target directory of your project.
  • To use it simply make that JAR available in your runtime classpath

You can now use the following as an input to the XWiki Rendering Parser:
{{example parameter="hello"/}}

Enjoy!

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