Developing User Interfaces with EMF Parsley

In this paper we describe the main features of EMF Parsley, a new Eclipse project for implementing applications based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). EMF Parsley aims at complementing the EMF reflective mechanisms with respect to rapidly creating user interfaces based on models, without having to deal with internal details and setup code. In particular, EMF Parsley uses injection mechanisms to easily customize all the aspects of such applications. Moreover, it provides a set of reusable user interface components like trees, tables and detail forms that manage the model with the introspective EMF capabilities, together with reusable views, editors and dialogs. Besides project wizards, to easily create projects based on EMF Parsley, the main developing tool is a DSL, implemented with Xtext/Xbase, that provides a rapid customization mechanism.