Writing Front-Ends

JEB front-end are also referred to as "JEB clients" (or "JEB third-party clients", to contrast with the "official UI desktop client").

JEB back-end API makes writing new clients (aka, front-ends) an easy task. A client can be:

• An automated client (for testing, for an automation pipeline)
• A command-line client
• A graphical front-end (e.g., the official UI desktop client)
• ...

Note

Not all JEB licenses allow the creation of third-party clients. Verify this by checking your license information in the About dialog box. It should show any-client. Typically, JEB Pro licenses allow the execution of third-party clients.

High-level Instructions

Use the provided source code template (see below) as a base for your client. The basic steps any client should take are the following:

• Use JebCoreService to retrieve an instance to ICoreContext
• Create an IEnginesContext
• Load a project within that context (IRuntimeProject)
• Add artifacts and process them (ILiveArtifact)
• Retrieve the products (IUnit)
• Proceed as usual with the units
  • We recommend developers to read our tutorial series on parser development to get familiar with units

Refer to the our simplified architecture diagrams to better visualize how those components are connected to one another.

Source Template

Full source code: Command-line client skeleton on GitHub

import java.io.File;

import com.pnfsoftware.jeb.core.JebCoreService;
import com.pnfsoftware.jeb.core.units.IUnit;
import com.pnfsoftware.jeb.util.base.Env;
import com.pnfsoftware.jeb.util.io.IO;
import com.pnfsoftware.jeb.util.logging.GlobalLog;
import com.pnfsoftware.jeb.util.logging.ILogger;

/**
 * Skeleton file for a custom JEB client. Requires JEB Pro version 5.37 or above.
 * <p>
 * This client assumes that an installation of JEB, with a valid license key, is pointed to by a
 * {@code JEB_HOME} environment variable.
 *
 */
public class JebCustomClientSample {
    static final ILogger logger = GlobalLog.getLogger(JebCustomClientSample.class);
    static {
        GlobalLog.addDestinationStream(System.out);
    }

    // provide a folder with files as the command-line argument
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        if(args.length == 0) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Provide a directory for scanning as the first command-line argument");
        }

        var jebHome = Env.get("JEB_HOME");
        if(jebHome == null) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Set the JEB_HOME environment variable to point to your JEB folder");
        }

        // instantiate the JEB core service
        var jeb = JebCoreService.getInstance(new File(jebHome));

        // create an engines context (a container of JEB projects)
        var engctx = jeb.createEnginesContext();

        // scan some files
        var files = IO.listFiles(args[0]);
        int i = 0;
        for(var file: files) {
            i++;
            logger.info("Processing file %d/%d : %s ...", i, files.size(), file.getName());

            // create or load a project (artifact container)
            var prj = engctx.createProject("ProjectTest" + i);

            // process the artifact, get units
            var art = prj.processArtifact(file);

            // proceed with the units
            var units = art.getUnits();

            // work with the units
            for(IUnit unit: units) {
                logger.info("Unit: %s", unit);
                //
                // ... do some work
                //
            }

            engctx.unloadProject(prj.getKey());
        }

        // close our engines context
        jeb.closeEnginesContext(engctx);

        // close JEB
        jeb.close();
    }
}