ObjectiveCParser

ObjectiveCParser performs a static analysis on Objective-C code to calculate the metric lines of code per method. The result is written to a *.csv file. ObjectiveCParser is a python script, which uses a generated antlr4 parser for the given Objective-C language grammar from antlr-grammars-v4.

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Installation Requirements

Make sure python3 (including pip3) is installed. Install antlr4, which enables parsing source code.

pip3 install antlr4-python3-runtime
pip3 install antlr4-tools

How to analyse your Objective-C code?

git clone https://github.com/alschmut/ObjectiveCParser.git
python3 src/main/ProjectParser.py /path/to/MyObjectiveCProject

This generates a *.csv file with the below structure:

path	method_loc
/path/to/MyFile.m/someMethod	1
/path/to/MyFile.m/anotherMethod	5

How to visualise the metrics?

I can reccommend using the Open-Source tool CodeCharta, which visualises metrics with a 3D city. Just follow the below steps:

1. npm i -g codecharta-analysis
2. ccsh csvimport -d=";" -o MyObjectiveCProject.cc.json MyObjectiveCProject.csv
3. Open the CodeCharta Web Demo and import the generated MyObjectiveCProject.cc.json file

How to add a new programming language to be analysed with antlr4

Generate Python classes for a new grammar

• Find the <new_language> grammar on antlr-grammars-v4
• Create a new folder <new_language> inside src/main/antlrParser/
• Copy paste all .g4 files like Parser, Lexer or UnicodeClasses into the <new_language> folder
• Execute antlr4 -Dlanguage=Python3 *.g4 inside your <new_language> folder. This generates some Python3 classes and other files

Override generated listener methods

• Create a new file <new_language>ListenerExtended.py inside src/main/antlrParser/ExtendedListener/
• Create a new class which just looks similar to the other existing classes like ObjcParserListenerExtended and extend the BaseListener class
• Override the language specific enter...() functions. To find out which functions to override, have a look at the hierarchical grammar definition inside <your_language>Parser.g4. Then store the obtained values inside the predefined BaseListener class.

Walk through the new grammar

Create another function inside the src/main/antlrParser/LanguageParser.py like below. Replace the placeholder with your generated/created classes.

def parse_<your_language>_file(self, input_stream: InputStream):
    lexer = <your_generated_lexer>(input_stream)
    stream = CommonTokenStream(lexer)
    parser = <your_generated_parser>(stream)
    tree = parser.<your_top_level_grammar_node>()
    listener = <your_expanded_listener>()
    return self.walk(listener, tree)

Add your supported language extension

Inside src/main/antlrParser/Lanague.py an enum with all supported programming languages is stored. Add your language name with its file-extension

Add new option to use your parse_<your_language>_file function

The LanguageParser.parse_file() function calls the appropriate parsing function for each language. Add yours with another if-statement checking the file extension