Navigate to Source File after Instant Reverse

Reverse Engineering is often needed to analyze source code of an application for identifying the system’s components and their interrelationships at a higher level of abstraction. Reverse Engineering is much used to reverse source code from an old system into class models for further analysis and development.

Visual Paradigm’s products provide the Instant Reverse feature for reverse engineering sources into UML class models easily. In this release, Instant Reverse is enhanced to support ‘memorizing’ the source file for the reversed models. With this enhancement, you can navigate to the source file from a class model for better referencing between model and implementation.

This section lists the brief steps required to reverse engineer UML class model from given source code.

1. Select Tools > Instant Reverse > %SOURCE-TYPE% from the main menu. In this article, we ‘ll take Java as the type of source code.
   
   
   This shows the Instant Reverse dialog box.
   
   
   
2. Specify the source file or folder. For reversing Java, click Add Source Folder to select the folder that contain source files. You may reverse multiple source folders. For other programming languages, enter the path directly to the Path field.
   
   
   If necessary, check Reverse source on demand to indicate that the resource will not be reversed until it is being used. With the option Reverse source on demand unchecked, models will be reversed from the resource to the project when the Instant Reverse process starts.
   
   
   In this article, we’ll reverse source code on demand.
3. Click OK to proceed with the reverse.
4. From the Class Repository tree, select the Java Resources that you want the class models to be reversed from (multiple selection is allowed).
   
   
   
5. Right-click on the selection and select Reverse Resources to > New Class Diagram from the popup menu to reverse the selected resources to the class repository and create a new class diagram for them.
   
   
   This forms a new Class Diagram from the source code.
   
   
   

As the reference to source file is stored as file reference of model, we can take advantage of the reference indicator appear at the corner of a shape to open up a source file.

1. Move the mouse cursor over a class shape. This shows the reference indicator.
   
   
   
2. Press on it to popup the list of reference.
   
   
   You’ll see the source file listed there.
3. Click on the source file to open it.
   
   
   The source file is opened.
   
   
   

Click on the link below to download:

• Java source code for reversing
  schoolsystem.zip
  
  
• The VP project that contains the models and diagrams resulted by performing Instant Reverse
  simpleschoolsystem.vpp
  
  

• Learn how to reverse engineer PHP 5.0 source to class models
  Reverse Engineering PHP Source by Instant Reverse
  
  
• To learn more about on-demand reverse engineering
  On-demand Instant Reverse Engineering
  
  
• Learn how to reverse engineer Python
  Reversing Python
  
  

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