uimafit-core/src/main/java/org/apache/uima/fit/component/ViewCreatorAnnotator.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package org.apache.uima.fit.component;

import org.apache.uima.analysis_engine.AnalysisEngineProcessException;
import org.apache.uima.cas.CASException;
import org.apache.uima.cas.CASRuntimeException;
import org.apache.uima.fit.descriptor.ConfigurationParameter;
import org.apache.uima.jcas.JCas;

/**
 * This annotator can be placed at/near the beginning of a pipeline to ensure that a particular view
 * is created before it is used further downstream. It will create a view for the view name
 * specified by the configuration parameter PARAM_VIEW_NAME if it doesn't exist. One place this is
 * useful is if you are using an annotator that uses the default view and you have mapped the
 * default view into a different view via a sofa mapping. The default view is created automatically
 * - but if you have mapped the default view to some other view, then the view provided to your
 * annotator (when it asks for the default view) will not be created unless you have explicitly
 * created it.
 * 
 * 
 */
public class ViewCreatorAnnotator extends JCasAnnotator_ImplBase {

  /**
   * The parameter name for the name of the viewed to be created by this annotator
   */
  public static final String PARAM_VIEW_NAME = "viewName";
  @ConfigurationParameter(mandatory = true)
  private String viewName;

  @Override
  public void process(final JCas aJCas) throws AnalysisEngineProcessException {
    createViewSafely(aJCas, viewName);
  }

  /**
   * Provides a simple call that allows you to safely create a view if it has not been created yet.
   * If the view already exists, it is ok to call this method anyways without worrying about
   * checking for this yet.
   * 
   * @param aJCas
   *          the {@link JCas} to create the view in
   * @param aViewName
   *          the name of the new view
   * @return true if the view was created as a result of calling this method. false if the view
   *         already existed.
   * @throws AnalysisEngineProcessException
   *           if the view could not be created or if an existing view with the given name could not
   *           be accessed
   */
  public static JCas createViewSafely(final JCas aJCas, final String aViewName)
          throws AnalysisEngineProcessException {
    try {
      try {
        return aJCas.getView(aViewName);
      } catch (CASRuntimeException ce) {
        return aJCas.createView(aViewName);
      }
    } catch (CASException ce) {
      throw new AnalysisEngineProcessException(ce);
    }
  }
}