AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF USER INTERFACES

• US 20090265368A1
• Filed: 04/17/2008
• Published: 10/22/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/17/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Schwink, Stephen, Crider, Anthony L.
• Granted Patent: US 8,490,050 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/38 for implementing user interfaces

Abstract

A communications schema is captured into a service-neutral interface schema created by inspecting metadata received from an object and creating from it an abstract user interface model. A transform is applied to the abstract user interface model to generate a user interface that targets a particular user interface technology. Any user interface technology can be targeted so that a user interface for any user interface technology can be auto-generated.

Claims

1. A system for generating a user interface comprising:

a schema generator that receives metadata for a reference object and generates from the received metadata a service-neutral interface schema; and

a user interface generator that receives the service-neutral interface schema and a transform directed to a particular target platform and generates from the service-neutral interface schema and the transform a service-specific user interface.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the schema generator requests the reference object for the metadata and the reference object returns the metadata via reflection.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the schema generator uses introspection to create an abstract interface schema from the metadata.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the schema generator determines if an access point to the reference object implies communicative intent by determining that the access point has both an input and an output, wherein the output is produced as a result of the input.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the user interface generator generates a user interface targeted to a target platform based on a service-specific transform.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the user interface generator generates a user interface targeted to a WPF platform from a web services communication class.

7. A method of auto-generating a user interface comprising:

obtaining metadata of a class object, the metadata comprising a description of ways to interact with the class object comprising at least one method; and

examining the at least one method to determine if the at least one method has communicative intent;

in response to determining that the at least one method of the class object has communicative intent, schematizing the at least one method by generating an generic internal representation of the at least one method; and

applying a transform directed to a particular target platform to the generic internal representation to programmatically auto-generate a target-specific user interface.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising filtering out private methods from the metadata wherein a private method is not represented in the generic internal representation.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the particular target platform is a WPF form.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the particular target platform is a web services form.

11. A computer-readable storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions which when executed cause a computing environment to:

auto-generate a service-specific user interface targeted to a particular platform by applying a target-specific transform to a service-neutral internal representation of methods and properties of a class object, wherein the methods and properties display communicative intent.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

determine that the methods and properties display communicative intent by determining that each method has a first input and a first output determined by the first input and that each property has a second input and a second output determined by the second input.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 12, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

determine that the methods and properties display communicative intent by compliance of the methods and properties with a provided schema.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

create a directed acyclic graph representation to represent a service-neutral interface schema.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

generate WPF XAML from a web services operation.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

generate VB.Net, or C# user interface code.

17. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

build a tree representing methods of the class object, wherein for each method a list of parameters is received, an empty root is created for the tree, a next parameter is taken from a parameters list for each method, the next parameter is converted into a node, the node is added to the root and wherein when all the parameters in the parameters list have been processed, a resultant root tree node is returned.

18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

test the next parameter for type, and in response to determining that the next parameter is a collection type, create an array node.

19. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

test the next parameter for type, and in response to determining that the next parameter is a class type, create a complex node.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, comprising further computer-executable instructions, which when executed cause the computing environment to:

test the next parameter for type, and in response to determining that the next parameter is an enumeration type, creating an enum node or in response to determining that the next parameter is not a collection type or a class type or an enumeration type, create a simple node.