A New Class Visualization Module for NetBeans

Tags:
Subheadline: 
Graph interdependencies inside one Java class

Last week I wrote a little module that uses the NetBeans Visual Library and the Javac Tree API to create a graph of the contents of a Java file, showing dependencies between class members. It's now available on the NetBeans daily build update center - if you're running a daily build of NetBeans, just go to Tools | Plugins and download Graphical Class Viewer.

My question is, would anybody actually find this useful? It was mostly an experiment to get more fluent with a couple of APIs I need to know well - but it seems like it could be handy if you're going to edit a class you didn't write and want to see where the action is - or if you've got a bunch of encapsulated fields and want to quickly see if anything is not using the getters and setters.

What it does:
  • Shows a graph (see screenshot below)
  • If you hover the mouse over, say, a method, then the path to things that method calls/uses will be shown in red, and things that call that method are shown in blue
  • You can click the arrow button on the widget for any class member and see its source code

Feel free to try it out and let me know if you think it's something worth putting more work into.

Also, if anyone knows of any speedy and good hub-and-spoke or other layout algorithms for the case where you have n nodes each of which can have up to n-1 connections to other nodes, feel free to let me know - what it does now is less than optimal. At some point I may think through the geometry to do it nicely, but I'm not sure when.

Location: 
Somewhere in Antarctica
AttachmentSize
gcv1.jpg72.65 KB
0
Average: 4 (2 votes)

(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)

Comments

Raphael Miranda replied on Thu, 2009/02/26 - 11:40am

Pretty cool work Tim. Does it integrate with grails domain? Can you alter your domain(relationships, navigation, etc ) and reflect them automatically in your code?

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.