PMD Java API | PMD Source Code Analyzer

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The easiest way to run PMD is to just use a build plugin in your favorite build tool like Apache Ant, Apache Maven or Gradle.

There are also many integrations for IDEs available, see Tools.

If you have your own build tool or want to integrate PMD in a different way, you can call PMD programmatically, as described here.

Dependencies

You’ll need to add the dependency to the language, you want to analyze. For Java, it will be net.sourceforge.pmd:pmd-java. If you use Maven, you can add a new (compile time) dependency like this:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sourceforge.pmd</groupId>
    <artifactId>pmd-java</artifactId>
    <version>${pmdVersion}</version>
</dependency>

Note: You’ll need to select a specific version. This is done in the example via the property pmdVersion.

This will transitively pull in the artifact pmd-core which contains the API.

Command line interface

The easiest way is to call PMD with the same interface as from command line. The main class is net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD:

import net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD;

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String[] pmdArgs = {
            "-d", "/home/workspace/src/main/java/code",
            "-R", "rulesets/java/quickstart.xml",
            "-f", "xml",
            "-r", "/home/workspace/pmd-report.xml"
        };
        PMD.main(pmdArgs);
    }
}

It uses the same options as described in PMD CLI reference.

Programmatically, variant 1

This is very similar:

import net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.PMDConfiguration;

public class PmdExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        PMDConfiguration configuration = new PMDConfiguration();
        configuration.setInputPaths("/home/workspace/src/main/java/code");
        configuration.setRuleSets("rulesets/java/quickstart.xml");
        configuration.setReportFormat("xml");
        configuration.setReportFile("/home/workspace/pmd-report.xml");

        PMD.runPMD(configuration);
    }
}

Programmatically, variant 2

This gives you more control over which files are processed, but is also more complicated. You can also provide your own custom renderers.

First we create a PMDConfiguration. This is currently the only way to specify a ruleset:

PMDConfiguration configuration = new PMDConfiguration();
configuration.setMinimumPriority(RulePriority.MEDIUM);
configuration.setRuleSets("rulesets/java/quickstart.xml");

In order to support type resolution, PMD needs to have access to the compiled classes and dependencies as well. This is called “auxclasspath” and is also configured here. Note: you can specify multiple class paths separated by : on Unix-systems or ; under Windows.
```
configuration.prependClasspath("/home/workspace/target/classes:/home/.m2/repository/my/dependency.jar");
```

Then we need to load the rulesets. This is done by using the configuration, taking the minimum priority into account:

RuleSetLoader ruleSetLoader = RuleSetLoader.fromPmdConfig(configuration);
List<RuleSet> ruleSets = ruleSetLoader.loadFromResources(Arrays.asList(configuration.getRuleSets().split(",")));

PMD operates on a list of DataSource. You can assemble a own list of FileDataSource, e.g.

List<DataSource> files = Arrays.asList(new FileDataSource(new File("/path/to/src/MyClass.java")));

For reporting, you can use a built-in renderer, e.g. XMLRenderer or a custom renderer implementing Renderer. Note, that you must manually initialize the renderer by setting a suitable Writer and calling start(). After the PMD run, you need to call end() and flush(). Then your writer should have received all output.
```
StringWriter rendererOutput = new StringWriter();
Renderer xmlRenderer = new XMLRenderer("UTF-8");
xmlRenderer.setWriter(rendererOutput);
xmlRenderer.start();
```
Now, all the preparations are done, and PMD can be executed. This is done by calling PMD.processFiles(...). This method call takes the configuration, the rulesets, the files to process, and the list of renderers. Provide an empty list, if you don’t want to use any renderer. Note: The auxclasspath needs to be closed explicitly. Otherwise the class or jar files may remain open and file resources are leaked.
```
try {
    PMD.processFiles(configuration, ruleSets, files, Collections.singletonList(renderer));
} finally {
    ClassLoader auxiliaryClassLoader = configuration.getClassLoader();
    if (auxiliaryClassLoader instanceof ClasspathClassLoader) {
        ((ClasspathClassLoader) auxiliaryClassLoader).close();
    }
}
```

After the call, you need to finish the renderer via end() and flush(). Then you can check the rendered output.

renderer.end();
renderer.flush();
System.out.println("Rendered Report:");
System.out.println(rendererOutput.toString());

Here is a complete example:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringWriter;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.nio.file.FileSystems;
import java.nio.file.FileVisitResult;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.PathMatcher;
import java.nio.file.SimpleFileVisitor;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;

import net.sourceforge.pmd.PMD;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.PMDConfiguration;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.RulePriority;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleSet;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.RuleSetLoader;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.renderers.Renderer;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.renderers.XMLRenderer;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.util.ClasspathClassLoader;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.util.datasource.DataSource;
import net.sourceforge.pmd.util.datasource.FileDataSource;

public class PmdExample2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        PMDConfiguration configuration = new PMDConfiguration();
        configuration.setMinimumPriority(RulePriority.MEDIUM);
        configuration.setRuleSets("rulesets/java/quickstart.xml");
        configuration.prependClasspath("/home/workspace/target/classes");
        RuleSetLoader ruleSetLoader = RuleSetLoader.fromPmdConfig(configuration);
        List<RuleSet> ruleSets = ruleSetLoader.loadFromResources(Arrays.asList(configuration.getRuleSets().split(",")));

        List<DataSource> files = determineFiles("/home/workspace/src/main/java/code");

        Writer rendererOutput = new StringWriter();
        Renderer renderer = createRenderer(rendererOutput);
        renderer.start();

        try {
            PMD.processFiles(configuration, ruleSets, files, Collections.singletonList(renderer));
        } finally {
            ClassLoader auxiliaryClassLoader = configuration.getClassLoader();
            if (auxiliaryClassLoader instanceof ClasspathClassLoader) {
                ((ClasspathClassLoader) auxiliaryClassLoader).close();
            }
        }

        renderer.end();
        renderer.flush();
        System.out.println("Rendered Report:");
        System.out.println(rendererOutput.toString());
    }

    private static Renderer createRenderer(Writer writer) {
        XMLRenderer xml = new XMLRenderer("UTF-8");
        xml.setWriter(writer);
        return xml;
    }

    private static List<DataSource> determineFiles(String basePath) throws IOException {
        Path dirPath = FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(basePath);
        final PathMatcher matcher = FileSystems.getDefault().getPathMatcher("glob:*.java");

        final List<DataSource> files = new ArrayList<>();

        Files.walkFileTree(dirPath, new SimpleFileVisitor<Path>() {
            @Override
            public FileVisitResult visitFile(Path path, BasicFileAttributes attrs) throws IOException {
                if (matcher.matches(path.getFileName())) {
                    System.out.printf("Using %s%n", path);
                    files.add(new FileDataSource(path.toFile()));
                } else {
                    System.out.printf("Ignoring %s%n", path);
                }
                return super.visitFile(path, attrs);
            }
        });
        System.out.printf("Analyzing %d files in %s%n", files.size(), basePath);
        return files;
    }
}

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