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Re: [Repast-developer] [Repast-interest] Generating agent descriptions from shapefiles
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From: Miles P. <mil...@gm...> - 2008-06-14 19:34:49
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Very cool, thanks guys! I didn't realize that geotools provided such a
nice high-level wrapper.
I think I have some fiddling time next week so I'll see what I can
whip up. You should be able to get POJOs, Repast, Ascape, Interfaces,
Test Cases, from that. One question perhaps for Nick that I forgot..
is there anything in the .rs .xml, especially display xmls that could
help to set up a nice basic initial graphic setup -- I mean in terms
of say spatial resolution, gird, other hints like that.. I prob. won't
get to tha one right away, but again if there is a nice example for
something that works well.
Does it make any sense to try to pull basic colors out of the shape
On Jun 13, 2008, at 2:39 AM, Dave Murray-Rust wrote:
> 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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>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> Rep...@li...
>>>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/repast-interest
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>>
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>
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