Ammy - UI Language for XAML platforms

Ammy is a modern UI language that either replaces or compliments XAML in your projects.

Project site

Documentation

Gitter chat

Roadmap

Main features of Ammy

• Very simple JSON-like syntax
• Mixins and aliases to fight copy-pasting and to keep code DRY
• Inline Binding Converters to avoid implementing IValueConverters for every simple task
• Runtime Update that actually works (VS2017 has very limited update functionality at the moment)

How Ammy code looks

Window "MyApp.MainWindow" {
  Title: "My first Application"

  Grid {
    TextBlock { "Hello, World!" }
  }
}

Note that you don't need to import any namespaces manually. In case you need to import external namespace, there is C# a using keyword available.

Slightly more complicated example

alias FormField (labelText, binding)
{
  StackPanel {
    Orientation: Horizontal
    
    TextBlock { Text: $labelText }
    TextBlock {
      Text: $binding
    }
  }
}

Window "MyApp.MainWindow" {
  Title: "My First App"
  
  StackPanel { 
    @FormField ("First name", bind FirstName)
    @FormField ("Last name", bind LastName)
    
    TextBlock {
      Text: bind 
            convert (MyViewModel vm) => "Hello, " + vm.FirstName + " " + vm.LastName
    }
  }
}

Building and debugging

• Install Visual Studio 2017 if you don't have one
• Install Nemerle (Click "Download Now" button)
• Clone repository
• Open Ammy.sln solution in VS2017 and build it
• Set Ammy.VisualStudio project as StartUp Project and start Debugging session
• Open Ammy.Tests.sln solution
• Ammy.Test.Workbench project is for debugging
• Ammy.Test.Wpf contains permanent tests that should all compile

Project structure

Syntax and AST

Ammy uses Nitra for parsing and typing. First, file is parsed with syntax defined in Syntax.nitra. Resulting ParseTree is then mapped to AST (Mapping.nitra, MappingExpr.nitra, MappingFunctions.nitra).

Semantic analysis is a process where types loaded from Backend are binded to AST. This process defined inside Ast and AstBase projects in .nitra files.

• Ammy.Backend (Loads referenced assemblies and creates Nitra symbols)
• Ammy.AstBase (Common AST types)
• Ammy.Ast (More AST types)
• Ammy.Syntax (Syntax and Mapping to AST)

Sidekick

Sidekick library has two primary functions. 1) ExpressionConverter used for inline binding converters 2) Runtime update logic

• Ammy.Sidekick.XamarinForms
• Ammy.Sidekick.Uwp
• Ammy.Sidekick.Common

Compilation and Tasks

Build assembly is a glue between IDE/MSBuild and Ammy language.

• Ammy.Build
• Ammy.BamlCompilerWPF

IDE

• Ammy.VisualStudio
• Ammy.VisualStudio.Service
• Ammy.VisualStudio.ItemTemplates

Ammy.VisualStudio only contains service providers. These providers use RuntimeLoader to load Ammy.VisualStudio.Service assembly and load actual services. Ammy.VisualStudio.Service contains all the logic for highlighting, intelli-sense, regions, adornments, classisifiers and other stuff.