Dialogue Branch Core Java Library

Introduction

The "Core" of the Dialogue Branch software is a library that can read and execute Dialogue Branch (.dlb) scripts. This core library is written in Java, and its source lives in this monorepo under packages/core. It is published to Maven Central as com.dialoguebranch:dlb-core-java.

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.dialoguebranch:dlb-core-java:<version>'
}

Package Overview

The com.dialoguebranch package is organised as follows:

• model/common — Shared types used by both the editing and execution models, e.g. ProjectMetaData, ScriptTreeNode, StorageSource.
• model/edit — The mutable editor model (EditableProject, EditableScript, EditableNode), used by authoring tools — not by the runtime execution engine.
• model/execute — The immutable runtime model (Project, Dialogue, Node, NodeBody, Reply, VariableString, LoggedDialogue, DialogueState), the command types executed within a node body (SetCommand, IfCommand, RandomCommand, ActionCommand, the InputCommand variants), and the API protocol types used to serialise dialogue state (DialogueMessage, DialogueStatement, ReplyMessage).
• execution — The runtime engine itself: ActiveDialogue drives a single live dialogue session, VariableStore holds session variables, and parser/ contains the parsers used at execution time (DialogueBranchParser, BodyParser, CommandParser, ProjectParser, DirectoryScriptLoader, and others).
• editing — Parsers and writers for the editor model (EditableScriptParser, EditableScriptWriter, EditableTranslationParser, EditableHeaderParser, and others), used by authoring tools such as the web client's visual editor.
• i18n — Translation support: Translator applies a .json translation file to a Dialogue, and TranslatableExtractor walks a node's body to extract translatable segments.
• exception — Typed exceptions used throughout the library (ScriptParseException, ExecutionException, VariableException, and others).
• cli — ProjectTool, an interactive command-line inspector (the module's default main class), and CommandLineRunner.

For the exact syntax of the .dlb script format this library parses and executes, see the Dialogue Branch Language Definition.

Documentation

Javadoc for the library can be generated locally with ./gradlew javadoc (output in packages/core/build/reports/javadoc/). Since the library is published to Maven Central, its Javadoc is also browsable via javadoc.io for any released version, without a local build.