How to create recipes

When planning large-scale code changes, it's a good idea to begin by creating a recipe that identifies all of the potential edit sites. Doing so gives you a full impact analysis of what you're about to do, before you actually do it. Taking the time to find all of these locations is especially important because real-world code is complex and nuanced. Without a proper accounting of this nuance, writing a transformation recipe will not be as accurate as you'd wish.

The Moderne plugin helps simplify this process by providing you with an easy way to create a search recipe for any piece of your code.

In this short guide, we'll walk through everything you need to know to get started with recipe creation using the Moderne plugin.

Ways to create recipes

To begin, find some API that you're interested in searching for. Then right-click on one of its usages and either:

• Click on Find Usages on All Repos and then click on Create Recipe (selecting the type of recipe that you want to create). This will create a search recipe based on the API you specified.

Find usages example

• Click on Refactor, select Create OpenRewrite Recipe..., and then click on Create Recipe (selecting the type of recipe you want to create). This will create a refactor recipe based on the API you specified. Please note that IntelliJ IDEA offers a keyboard shortcut for the Create OpenRewrite Recipe... menu (it defaults to alt + command + 9 on a Mac).

Refactor menu example

Types of recipes you can create

The Moderne plugin allows you to create two types of recipes: Refaster recipes and Imperative visitor-based recipes.

Refaster recipes are better if you're doing a straightforward replacement (such as converting StringUtils.equals(..) to Objects.equals(..)). For everything else, you should create an Imperative recipe.

Refaster recipe example

package org.openrewrite.gradle;

import org.openrewrite.TreeVisitor;
import org.openrewrite.Preconditions;
import com.google.errorprone.refaster.annotation.AfterTemplate;
import com.google.errorprone.refaster.annotation.BeforeTemplate;
import org.openrewrite.java.template.RecipeDescriptor;

@RecipeDescriptor(
        name = "My recipe name",
        description = "A full sentence description."
)
class MyRecipe9 {
    @BeforeTemplate
    TreeVisitor before(Preconditions p, boolean check, TreeVisitor v) {
        return p.check(check, v);
    }
    
    @AfterTemplate
    TreeVisitor after(Preconditions p, boolean check, TreeVisitor v) {
        // TODO what do you want it to be after?
        return null;
    }
}

Visitor recipe example

package org.openrewrite.gradle;

import org.openrewrite.ExecutionContext;
import org.openrewrite.Preconditions;
import org.openrewrite.Recipe;
import org.openrewrite.TreeVisitor;
import org.openrewrite.internal.lang.NonNullApi;
import org.openrewrite.java.JavaIsoVisitor;
import org.openrewrite.java.MethodMatcher;
import org.openrewrite.java.search.UsesMethod;
import org.openrewrite.java.tree.J;
import org.openrewrite.marker.SearchResult;

@NonNullApi
class MyRecipe10 extends Recipe {

    @Override
    public String getDisplayName() {
        return "My recipe";
    }

    @Override
    public String getDescription() {
        return "This is a description of what the recipe does.";
    }

    @Override
    public TreeVisitor<?, ExecutionContext> getVisitor() {
        MethodMatcher matcher = new MethodMatcher("org.openrewrite.Preconditions#check(boolean,org.openrewrite.TreeVisitor)");
        return Preconditions.check(new UsesMethod<>(matcher), new JavaIsoVisitor<>() {
            @Override
            public J.MethodInvocation visitMethodInvocation(J.MethodInvocation method, ExecutionContext ctx) {
                if (matcher.matches(method)) {
                    // TODO do something other than just mark the method as found?
                    return SearchResult.found(method);
                }
                return super.visitMethodInvocation(method, ctx);
            }
        });
    }
}

For more information on recipe development, check out the OpenRewrite authoring recipes docs.