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» Writing a custom rule
<a
target="_blank"
href="https://github.com/pmd/pmd/blob/master/docs/pages/pmd/userdocs/extending/writing_java_rules.md"
class="pull-right"
role="button"
><i class="fa fa-github fa-lg"></i> Edit on GitHub</a
>
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<hr />
</header>
<div class="post-header">
<h1 class="post-title-main">Writing a custom rule</h1>
</div>
<div class="post-content" data-github-edit-url="https://github.com/pmd/pmd/blob/master/docs/pages/pmd/userdocs/extending/writing_java_rules.md">
<div class="summary">Learn how to write a custom rule for PMD</div>
<div id="inline-toc"><!-- empty, move TOC here when screen size too small --></div>
<div class="alert alert-info" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-info-circle"></i> <b>Note:</b> TODO All that should be written in the Javadocs,
not sure we even need a doc page. Would be simpler to maintain too</div>
<div class="alert alert-danger" role="alert"><i class="fa fa-exclamation-circle"></i> <b>Warning:</b> WIP lots of stuff missing</div>
<p>This page covers the specifics of writing a rule in Java. The basic development
process is very similar to the process for XPath rules, which is described in
<a href="pmd_userdocs_extending_your_first_rule.html#rule-development-process">Your First Rule</a>.</p>
<p>Basically, you open the designer, look at the structure of the AST, and refine
your rule as you add test cases.</p>
<p>In this page well talk about rules for the Java language, but the process is
very similar for other languages.</p>
<h2 id="basics">Basics</h2>
<p>To write a rule in Java youll have to:</p>
<ol>
<li>write a Java class that implements the interface <a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-core/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/Rule.html#"><code>Rule</code></a>. Each
language implementation provides a base rule class to ease your pain,
e.g. <a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-java/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/lang/java/rule/AbstractJavaRule.html#"><code>AbstractJavaRule</code></a>.</li>
<li>compile this class, linking it to PMD APIs (eg using PMD as a maven dependency)</li>
<li>bundle this into a JAR and add it to the execution classpath of PMD</li>
<li>declare the rule in your ruleset XML</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="rule-execution">Rule execution</h2>
<p>Most base rule classes use a <a href="https://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns/visitor">Visitor pattern</a>
to explore the AST.</p>
<h3 id="tree-traversal">Tree traversal</h3>
<p>When a rule is applied to a file, its handed the root of the AST and told
to traverse all the tree to look for violations. Each rule defines a specific
<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">visit</code> method for each type of node for of the language, which
by default just visits the children.</p>
<p>So the following rule would traverse the whole tree and do nothing:</p>
<div class="language-java highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kd">public</span> <span class="kd">class</span> <span class="nc">MyRule</span> <span class="kd">extends</span> <span class="nc">AbstractJavaRule</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="c1">// all methods are default implementations!</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>Generally, a rule wants to check for only some node types. In our XPath example
in <a href="pmd_userdocs_extending_your_first_rule.html">Your First Rule</a>,
we wanted to check for some <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">VariableDeclaratorId</code> nodes. Thats the XPath name,
but in Java, youll get access to the <a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-java/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/lang/java/ast/ASTVariableDeclaratorId.html#"><code>ASTVariableDeclaratorId</code></a>
full API.</p>
<p>If you want to check for some specific node types, you can override the
corresponding <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">visit</code> method:</p>
<div class="language-java highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code><span class="kd">public</span> <span class="kd">class</span> <span class="nc">MyRule</span> <span class="kd">extends</span> <span class="nc">AbstractJavaRule</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="nd">@Override</span>
<span class="kd">public</span> <span class="nc">Object</span> <span class="nf">visit</span><span class="o">(</span><span class="nc">ASTVariableDeclaratorId</span> <span class="n">node</span><span class="o">,</span> <span class="nc">Object</span> <span class="n">data</span><span class="o">)</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="c1">// This method is called on each node of type ASTVariableDeclaratorId</span>
<span class="c1">// in the AST</span>
<span class="k">if</span> <span class="o">(</span><span class="n">node</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="na">getType</span><span class="o">()</span> <span class="o">==</span> <span class="kt">short</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="na">class</span><span class="o">)</span> <span class="o">{</span>
<span class="c1">// reports a violation at the position of the node</span>
<span class="c1">// the "data" parameter is a context object handed to by your rule</span>
<span class="c1">// the message for the violation is the message defined in the rule declaration XML element</span>
<span class="n">addViolation</span><span class="o">(</span><span class="n">data</span><span class="o">,</span> <span class="n">node</span><span class="o">);</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
<span class="c1">// this calls back to the default implementation, which recurses further down the subtree</span>
<span class="k">return</span> <span class="kd">super</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="na">visit</span><span class="o">(</span><span class="n">node</span><span class="o">,</span> <span class="n">data</span><span class="o">);</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
<span class="o">}</span>
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>The <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">super.visit(node, data)</code> call is super common in rule implementations,
because it makes the traversal continue by visiting all the descendants of the
current node.</p>
<h4 id="stopping-the-traversal">Stopping the traversal</h4>
<p>Sometimes you have checked all you needed and youre sure that the descendants
of a node may not contain violations. In that case, you can avoid calling the
<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">super</code> implementation and the traversal will not continue further down. This
means that your callbacks (<code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">visit</code> implementations) wont be called on the rest
of the subtree. The siblings of the current node may be visited
recursively nevertheless.</p>
<h4 id="economic-traversal-the-rulechain">Economic traversal: the rulechain</h4>
<p>If you dont care about the order in which the nodes are traversed (e.g. your
rule doesnt maintain any state between visits), then you can monumentally
speed-up your rule by using the <strong>rulechain</strong>.</p>
<p>That mechanism doesnt recurse on all the tree, instead, your rule will only be
passed the nodes it is interested in. To use the rulechain correctly:</p>
<ul>
<li>Your rule must register those node types by calling <a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-core/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/Rule.html#addRuleChainVisit(java.lang.Class)"><code>addRuleChainVisit</code></a>
in its constructor.</li>
<li>Your visit methods <strong>must not recurse!</strong> In effect, you should call never
call <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">super.visit</code> in the methods.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="execution-across-files-thread-safety-and-statefulness">Execution across files, thread-safety and statefulness</h3>
<p>When starting execution, PMD will instantiate a new instance of your rule.
If PMD is executed in multiple threads, then each thread is using its own
instance of the rule. This means, that the rule implementation <strong>does not need to care about
threading issues</strong>, as PMD makes sure, that a single instance is not used concurrently
by multiple threads.</p>
<p>However, for performance reasons, the rule instances are used for multiple files.
This means, that the constructor of the rule is only executed once (per thread)
and the rule instance is reused. If you rely on a proper initialization of instance
properties, you can do the initialization e.g. in the visit-method of the <a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-java/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/lang/java/ast/ASTCompilationUnit.html#"><code>ASTCompilationUnit</code></a>
node - which is visited first and only once per file. However, this
solution would only work for rules written for the Java language. A language
independent way is to override the method <code class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge">start</code> of the rule.
The start method is called exactly once per file.</p>
<!-- We don't support language-independent rules anyway... -->
<h2 id="rule-lifecycle-reference">Rule lifecycle reference</h2>
<h3 id="construction">Construction</h3>
<p>Exactly once:</p>
<ol>
<li>The rules no-arg constructor is called when loading the ruleset.
The rules constructor must define:
<ul>
<li><a href="#economic-traversal-the-rulechain">Rulechain visits</a></li>
<li><a href="pmd_userdocs_extending_defining_properties.html#for-java-rules">Property descriptors</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>If the rule was included in the ruleset as a rule reference,
some properties <a href="pmd_userdocs_configuring_rules.html#rule-properties">may be overridden</a>.
If an overridden property is unknown, an error is reported.</li>
<li>Misconfigured rules are removed from the ruleset</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="execution">Execution</h3>
<p>For each thread, a deep copy of the rule is created. Each thread is given
a different set of files to analyse. Then, for each such file, for each
rule copy:</p>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-core/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/Rule.html#start(net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleContext)"><code>start</code></a> is called once, before parsing</li>
<li><a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-core/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/Rule.html#apply(java.util.List,net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleContext)"><code>apply</code></a> is called with the root
of the AST. That method performs the AST traversal that ultimately calls visit methods.
Its not called for RuleChain rules.</li>
<li><a href="https://docs.pmd-code.org/apidocs/pmd-core/6.54.0/net/sourceforge/pmd/Rule.html#end(net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleContext)"><code>end</code></a> is called when the rule is done processing
the file</li>
</ol>
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