Silvera

Silvera is a declarative language for modeling microservice architectures based on textX, and it is designed in a way that directly implements domain-related design patterns.

Silvera is:

• lightweight and editor-agnostic language - you can use text editor of your choice to write Silvera programs.
• built with heterogeneity in mind - Silvera's compiler can produce code for any programming language or framework since code generators are registered as plugins.

In addition, Silvera uses microservice-tailored metrics to evaluate the architecture of the designed system and automatically generates the documentation. Architecture Evaluation Processor comes with a set of predefined metrics, but you can also add your own!.

Silvera is fully implemented in Python.

Quick intro

Here is a small example where we define a service registry and one microservice.

# setup.si

service-registry ServiceRegistry {
	client_mode=False
	deployment {
		version="0.0.1"
		port=9091
		url="http://localhost"
	}
}

import "setup.si"

service Bookstore {

    service_registry=ServiceRegistry

    api {

        @crud
        typedef Book [
            @id str isbn
            @required str title
            @required str author
            str category
            @required double price
        ]

        @rest(method=GET)
        list<Book> listBooks()

        @rest(method=GET)
        bool bookExists(str isbn)

        @rest(method=GET)
        double bookPrice(str isbn)
    }

}

Installation

You can use pip to install Silvera:

$ pip install silvera

To verify that you have installed Silvera correctly run the following command:

$ silvera

You should get output like this:

Usage: silvera [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --debug  Debug/trace output.
  --help   Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  check            Checks if created model is valid.
  compile          Compiles application code into to provided output...
  evaluate         Evaluates the architecture for given project.
  init             Creates initial Silvera project
  list-generators  Lists all currently available code generators
  visualize        Visualize the architecture for given project.

Feature highlights

• Designed patterns directly implemented in language

• Project modularization - imports

• Project evaluation based on metrics

• Automatic code generation

• Support for custom code generators via plugins

User guide

For documentation and tutorials, visit docs: https://alensuljkanovic.github.io/silvera/

Additional code generators

Additional code generators that you can use are:

• pyvera - Python code generator for Silvera
• silvera-csharp-gen - C# code generator for Silvera
• gogen - Go code generator for Silvera

Citing Silvera

If you are using Silvera in your research project we would be very grateful if you cite our paper:

Suljkanović, A.; Milosavljević, B.; Inđić, V.; Dejanović, I. Developing Microservice-Based Applications Using the Silvera Domain-Specific Language. Appl. Sci. 2022, 12, 6679. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12136679

Python versions

Tested with Python 3.7.4+