SwiftDTO

Overview

Generate swift DTO files from CoreData model or from a Soap WSDL

A macOS command line tool that generates Swift data models based on one or more CoreData model files in XML format. Much in the same way as you can generate CoreData classes within Xcode ("Create NSManagedObject subclass...").

There is a switch to generate Parse SDK compatible models as well.

There is also support for soap services. SwiftDTO can take an xml (xsd URL in wsdl soap description) file with the object description and create the appropriate model classes. (Contact me for another CLI tool to create service classes from the corresponding wsdl files)

Further there is now a java exporter, in order to export the same models for Android. However the java support for now just outputs the model files. It does not contain any code to convert the models to classes. Until now in our x-platform projects, Android always used a JSON Parser library and the only thing we needed were very simple model classes (and a bunch of @ annotations, which of course vary from one JSON Parser library to the other). Of course the java export can (and if one day neccessary WILL) be enhanced to do much the same as the swift code. which is no need for any JSON parser library. And of course the swift export can as well be simplified to just the model description, if the project uses a swift JSON library (in that case a good starting point would be the java export). There is a group "Exporter", where you can add your own subclasses of BaseExporter, in a similar way as the two existing XML2SwiftFiles and XML2JavaFiles. There is no need to change anything else.

Written in Swift 3.

Features

• Processes XML files, which represent a CoreData model, which was created with Xcodes CoreData editor Alternatively you can provide a soap WSDL file
• Generates immutable Swift struct definitions or java model classes.
• Converts JSON Date representations to Swift Date objects

What is code generation?

Using a JSON-to-Swift code generator is very different from using a JSON library API. If you have never worked with a code generator before, check out this blog post for a quick overview.

How to get it

• Download the SwiftDTO app binary from the latest release
• Copy SwiftDTO to your desktop
• Open a Terminal window and run this command to give the app permission to execute:

chmod +x ~/Desktop/SwiftDTO

Or build the tool in Xcode yourself:

• Clone the repository / Download the source code

• Build the project

• Open a Finder window to the executable file

• Drag SwiftDTO from the Finder window to your desktop

How to install it

Assuming that the SwiftDTO app is on your desktop…

Open a Terminal window and run this command:

cp ~/Desktop/SwiftDTO /usr/local/bin/

Verify SwiftDTO is in your search path by running this in Terminal:

SwiftDTO

You should see the tool respond like this:

Expected string argument defining the path to the XCModelData file!
Usage: ./SwiftDTO [string]

Now that a copy of SwiftDTO is in your search path, delete it from your desktop.

You're ready to go! 🎉

How to use it

Open a Terminal window and pass SwiftDTO a file path to a CoreData model XML file:

SwiftDTO /path/to/some/CDData.xcdatamodel/contents

The tool creates the swift files in the working directory, unless you specify an output folder as command line argument.

The source code download includes an example directory with a CDData CoreData file so that you can test it out.

Structure and property names

For each entity found in the provided CoreData XML file SwiftDTO creates a swift file with either:

• the corresponding struct for the DTO (Data Transfer Object)
• the corresponding enum type, if the entity is marked as being an enum (User Info for that entity has a key "isEnum" with a value of "1").
• the corresponding protocol, if the entity is an abstract entity

Use:

SwiftDTO --help

for a description of accepted CLI parameters.

Date parsing

SwiftDTO creates Date objects from strings or timestamps