Re: [Repast-developer] [Repast-interest] Generating agent descriptions from shapefiles

[Dave Murray-R. <d.m...@ed...>]

Hi Miles, Nick,

I haven't looked into metaABM yet, so I'm not certain whether it would  
work for our organisational needs (although I think it's a  
tremendously exciting idea!). In the mean time, I can happily give you  
my shapefile parsing code (which simply pulls attribute names and  
types out of a shapefile), and the code fragments I have in my  
ContextBuilder relating to reading the shapefiles.

My ContextBuilder stuff is very simple; after creating appropriate  
geographies, I have a block to load each shapefile, e.g.:

		GeographyParameters geoParams = new GeographyParameters();
		Geography geography =  
GeographyFactoryFinder 
.createGeographyFactory( null ).createGeography( "Geography", context,  
geoParams );
		try
		{
			File file = new File( "data/Farms_All2.shp" );
			ShapefileLoader loader = new ShapefileLoader<Farm>( Farm.class,  
file.toURL(), geography, context );
			while ( loader.hasNext() )
			{
				Farm farm = (Farm) loader.next();
				//Callback point
				System.out.println( "Got a farm: " + farm + ": " + farm.getFARM() );
			}
		} catch (Exception e)
		{
			System.err.println( "Problem loading farms: " + e );
			e.printStackTrace();
		}

My parser is attached, again it's very simple.

I think what I'll do right now is create a simple eclipse plugin which  
generates POJOs from shapefiles, and then hope that I can convert  
myself and everyone to metaABM. If there's anything useful I can do  
for the metaABM development I'll be interested, and I'll definitely  
take up the offer of metaABM mentoring if it looks like a good option  
for what we want to do.

Thanks very much for suggestions and support!

Cheers,
dave

On 11 Jun 2008, at 21:22, Miles Parker wrote:

>
> Guys, this is _exactly_ what the .score system was originaly  
> designed to do, and what the metaABM system provides. There is a  
> direct mapping from metaABM -> score, so you can do all of your work  
> in metaabm and then use the older score representation as an  
> intermediate step. metaABM also generates all the basic descriptors  
> and so on for the model.rs directory. We use the  
> openArchitectureWare system which is becoming part of the core  
> Eclipse environment and is extremely powerful, flexible and robust,  
> though arguably not quite as easy to tweak as velocity.  It is a  
> simple set of plugins with dependencies on just the oAW plugins.
>
> The idea behind score/metaabm is to have an intermediate  
> representational layer between various artifacts, design tools,  
> languages, etc.. and various targets such as Simphony, other ABM  
> platforms, specialized systems, etc..  metaABM already generates  
> complete Simphony models from the high-level representation, You  
> also get HTML docs generated automatically (Tom H. did the first run  
> at this). We also provide a "Method" construct that allows one to  
> insert Java code into the skeleton from the model. With the 1.1  
> release which I am about to announce to this list :), there is much  
> better support for protected regions and generation of skeleton   
> structures, so that you can use the metaABM behavior representations  
> and/or your own implementations.With the Metascape IDE, you can even  
> create JUnit test case stubs, Interfaces, etc...
>
>
> All of that is to suggest a course of action that I was really  
> hoping to be able to do but had no hope of getting to in the short  
> term -- that is a key part of what you suggest; getting shape files  
> into the metaABM system automatically.  If one could do that, you'd  
> have the code generation part done 'for free'.
>
> I have already done such a thing to import arbitrary Java and class  
> files, so the basic approach is sketched out. The Ecore framework  
> which MetaABM is built upon provides that ability to very easily  
> programmatically define models, which are then persisted, just as if  
> a use had created them. For example to create an attribute, you just  
> do:
>
> SAttribute attr = MetaABMFactory.eINSTANCE.createSAttribute();
> ...
> agent.getAttributes().add(attr);
>
> What is missing is the part that gets the metadata from the shape  
> files. I also have to do some work on the GIS target for Simphony  
> side. What I can offer is...
>
> If you can get together the basic code to parse the Shape file  
> parsed, I can build the metaABM part, and integrate it into the IDE.
> If you can identify any missng pieces from the GIS part of the  
> existing metaabm design I can add them into the metadata model.
> If you can get together a general pseudo-code representation of what  
> the Context builder part should look like, I can update the template  
> to match.
>
> This wouldn't take a whole lot of time and would add a _lot_ of  
> capability. Whaddya think?
>
>
> SO the basic idea would be
>
> On Jun 11, 2008, at 9:18 AM, Dave Murray-Rust wrote:
>
>> Nick,
>>
>> Great, I've used velocity previously, so that sounds good.
>>
>> I'm thinking of explicitly generating source files from shapefiles
>> rather than on the fly geneneration for exactly the reasons you  
>> give -
>> it's much easier for code completion etc.
>>
>> I was thinking that it might make sense to create abstract classes
>> which were then subclassed to add functionality, so that if  
>> shapefiles
>> change and regeneration is necessary, it's relatively easy to keep  
>> the
>> handwritten code separate, although this does reduce the  
>> possibilities
>> for inheriting other functionality. I'll have a play around and see
>> what seems sensible.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> dave
>>
>>
>> On 11 Jun 2008, at 16:27, Nick Collier wrote:
>>
>>> Dave,
>>>
>>> I think this is very good idea. We haven't planned on implementing
>>> such a thing. How are you thinking of this? A utility that generates
>>> the java source from a shapefile, or something more complicated? If
>>> you are thinking about generating java source then you might want to
>>> look at the velocity template engine. We use this in simphony
>>> already. With it you can define templates, like:
>>>
>>> #foreach($prop in $properties)
>>> public $prop.type get{$prop.name}() {
>>> 	...
>>> }
>>>
>>> ...
>>> #end
>>>
>>> then you pass the velocity the template and in this case your
>>> properties and it will generate the file for you.
>>>
>>> See http://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/user-guide.html for  
>>> more.
>>>
>>> If you want to do more complicated on the fly class / object
>>> creation, we use javaassist for that:
>>>
>>> http://www.csg.is.titech.ac.jp/~chiba/javassist/
>>>
>>> The on the fly generation becomes more complicated in that the class
>>> won't exist at compile time, so if you refer to these agents in your
>>> code and expect it to compile the agent's type will have to be some
>>> interface or something that is known at compile time.
>>>
>>> As for packaging / distribution, if its the former source code
>>> generator then I think a stand alone utility that we would be happy
>>> to include with repast and link to on the website would be  
>>> excellent.
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 11, 2008, at 11:03 AM, Dave Murray-Rust wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I've just been creating some agents from shapefiles, and while in
>>>> general it's great that this is possible, it gets a little fiddly
>>>> creating all the correct parameters for the agents matching the
>>>> parameters in the shapefile (I spent a few hours debugging the fact
>>>> that an ID was a long in one file and an int in another etc). It
>>>> seems
>>>> like it should be relatively easy to create a code generation  
>>>> utility
>>>> which takes a shapefile and spits out agent classes.
>>>>
>>>> Before I get into this, though, I'd like to make sure that any  
>>>> work I
>>>> do is as useful as possible, so I'm wondering:
>>>>
>>>> - Would this be useful to other people?
>>>> - Is it something that the core team are planning?
>>>> - How would you like to see it implemented? I guess the most  
>>>> natural
>>>> solution would be addition to the repast plugin, but there is also
>>>> the
>>>> possibility of a standalone plugin, batch scripts etc.
>>>> - How much use for relational concepts would people have, such as
>>>> being able to say "The ownerID in this shapefile relates to the  
>>>> ID in
>>>> this other shapefile" and have links automatically created when
>>>> shapefiles are loaded?
>>>> - Is there a particular code generation strategy or tool which  
>>>> would
>>>> fit well with RepastS?
>>>> - If the best answer is to extend the RepastS plugin, is this
>>>> possible, and are there any docs which would help me get started?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any suggestions!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>>>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
>> It's the best place to buy or sell services for
>> just about anything Open Source.
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>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/repast-interest
>
>


-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.