SpiceDB Client Generator

• Bored of copy & pasting strings from your SpiceDB schema into your client code?
• Had enough bugs or downtimes due to client library bugs due to typing and typo mistakes?

Look no further!

This is a Java generator for SpiceDB schemas which generates:

• constants - generates string constants for object definitions, permissions and relations
• type-safe references - generates type-safe object references
• type-safe relationship updates - provides factory methods to assemble type-safe relationship updates

Getting Started

Prerequistes:

• GitHub packages for Maven

1. Add the com.oviva.spicegen:api dependency
2. Add the com.oviva.spicegen:spicegen-maven-plugin plugin

Example pom.xml

...
        <!-- `repository` &` pluginRepository` definitions according to GitHub package -->
        ...
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.oviva.spicegen</groupId>
        <artifactId>api</artifactId>
        <version>${spicegen.version}</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>
        ...
<plugins>
<plugin>
    <groupId>com.oviva.spicegen</groupId>
    <artifactId>spicegen-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${spicegen.version}</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <configuration>
                <schemaPath>${project.basedir}/src/main/resources/schema.zed</schemaPath>
                <packageName>${project.groupId}.permissions</packageName>
                <outputDirectory>${project.basedir}/target/generated-sources/src/main/java</outputDirectory>
            </configuration>
            <goals>
                <goal>spicegen</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>

Implementation Overview

graph LR
    schema[/schema.zed/] -- " pre-process to AST (go) " --> ast[Abstract Syntax Tree]
    ast -- " read and map (java) " --> model[Schema Model]
    model -- generate --> source[/TypeDefs & Schema Constants/]

The generator work in multiple stages that could be re-used for other generators, namely:

1. The SpiceDB schema is parsed (*.zed) into an AST by the official lexer and parser. See parser.
2. The AST is serialized to JSON, which in turn is picked up by the Java generator and transformed into a nice model. See model.
3. The schema model is transformed into Java sources. See generator

To make this easy to use, all the above is bundled in the maven plugin.

Useful Links

• SpiceDB API Docs

Wishlist

• type-safe IDs, needs additional metadata in the schema
• generate caveats
• permission check boilerplate, might need additional schema metadata