creating a simple rule engine in java

Question

I am exploring different ways to create a simple business rule engine in Java. I need to present the client with a simple webapp that lets him configure a bunch of rules. A sample of rule base might look like this :

Here's example:

 IF (PATIENT_TYPE = "A" AND ADMISSION_TYPE="O")
 SEND TO OUTPATIENT
 ELSE IF PATIENT_TYPE = "B" 
 SEND TO INPATIENT

The rule engine is pretty simple, the final action could be just one of two actions, sending to inpatient or outpatient. The operators involved in an expression could be =,>,<,!= and logical operators between expressions are AND, OR and NOT.

I want to build a web application where user will write in a small script in a textarea, and I would evaluate the expression - this way, business rules are explained in simple English and business user has complete control on logic.

From the research I did so far, I came across, ANTLR and writing my own scripting language as possible options to solve this problem. I haven't explore options like Drools rules engine, because I have a feeling that it might be an overkill here. Have you had any experience in solving these kind of problems? If yes, how did you go about it?

Answer 1

Implementing a simple rule-based evaluation system in Java isn't that hard to achieve. Probably the parser for the expression is the most complicated stuff. The example code below uses a couple of patterns to achieve your desired functionality.

A singleton pattern is used to store each available operation in a member map. The operation itself use a command pattern to provide flexible extensibility while the respective action for a valid expression does make use of the dispatching pattern. Last bust not least, a interpreter pattern is used for validating each rule.

An expression like presented in your example above consists of operations, variables and values. In reference to a wiki-example everything that can be declared is an Expression. The interface therefore looks like this:

import java.util.Map;

public interface Expression
{
    public boolean interpret(final Map<String, ?> bindings);
}

While the example on the wiki-page returns an int (they implement a calculator), we only need a boolean return value here to decide if a expression should trigger an action if the expression evaluates to true.

An expression can, as stated above, be either an operation like =, AND, NOT, ... or a Variable or its Value. The definition of a Variable is enlisted below:

import java.util.Map;

public class Variable implements Expression
{
    private String name;

    public Variable(String name)
    {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName()
    {
        return this.name;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean interpret(Map<String, ?> bindings)
    {
        return true;
    }
}

Validating a variable name does not make that much sense, therefore true is returned by default. The same holds true for a value of a variable which is kept as generic as possible on defining a BaseType only:

import java.util.Map;

public class BaseType<T> implements Expression
{
    public T value;
    public Class<T> type;

    public BaseType(T value, Class<T> type)
    {
        this.value = value;
        this.type = type;
    }

    public T getValue()
    {
        return this.value;
    }

    public Class<T> getType()
    {
        return this.type;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean interpret(Map<String, ?> bindings)
    {
        return true;
    }

    public static BaseType<?> getBaseType(String string)
    {
        if (string == null)
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("The provided string must not be null");

        if ("true".equals(string) || "false".equals(string))
            return new BaseType<>(Boolean.getBoolean(string), Boolean.class);
        else if (string.startsWith("'"))
            return new BaseType<>(string, String.class);
        else if (string.contains("."))
            return new BaseType<>(Float.parseFloat(string), Float.class);
        else
            return new BaseType<>(Integer.parseInt(string), Integer.class);
    }
}

The BaseType class contains a factory method to generate concrete value types for a specific Java type.

An Operation is now a special expression like AND, NOT, =, ... The abstract base class Operation does define a left and right operand as the operand can refer to more than one expression. F.e. NOT probably only refers to its right-hand expression and negates its validation-result, so true turn into false and vice versa. But AND on the other handside combines a left and right expression logically, forcing both expression to be true on validation.

import java.util.Stack;

public abstract class Operation implements Expression
{
    protected String symbol;

    protected Expression leftOperand = null;
    protected Expression rightOperand = null;

    public Operation(String symbol)
    {
        this.symbol = symbol;
    }

    public abstract Operation copy();

    public String getSymbol()
    {
        return this.symbol;
    }

    public abstract int parse(final String[] tokens, final int pos, final Stack<Expression> stack);

    protected Integer findNextExpression(String[] tokens, int pos, Stack<Expression> stack)
    {
        Operations operations = Operations.INSTANCE;

        for (int i = pos; i < tokens.length; i++)
        {
            Operation op = operations.getOperation(tokens[i]);
            if (op != null)
            {
                op = op.copy();
                // we found an operation
                i = op.parse(tokens, i, stack);

                return i;
            }
        }
        return null;
     }
}

Two operations probably jump into the eye. int parse(String[], int, Stack<Expression>); refactors the logic of parsing the concrete operation to the respective operation-class as it probably knows best what it needs to instantiate a valid operation. Integer findNextExpression(String[], int, stack); is used to find the right hand side of the operation while parsing the string into an expression. It might sound strange to return an int here instead of an expression but the expression is pushed onto the stack and the return value here just returns the position of the last token used by the created expression. So the int value is used to skip already processed tokens.

The AND operation does look like this:

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Stack;

public class And extends Operation
{    
    public And()
    {
        super("AND");
    }

    public And copy()
    {
        return new And();
    }

    @Override
    public int parse(String[] tokens, int pos, Stack<Expression> stack)
    {
        Expression left = stack.pop();
        int i = findNextExpression(tokens, pos+1, stack);
        Expression right = stack.pop();

        this.leftOperand = left;
        this.rightOperand = right;

        stack.push(this);

        return i;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean interpret(Map<String, ?> bindings)
    {
        return leftOperand.interpret(bindings) && rightOperand.interpret(bindings);
    }
}

In parse you probably see that the already generated expression from the left side is taken from the stack, then the right hand side is parsed and again taken from the stack to finally push the new AND operation containing both, the left and right hand expression, back onto the stack.

NOT is similar in that case but only sets the right hand side as described previously:

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Stack;

public class Not extends Operation
{    
    public Not()
    {
        super("NOT");
    }

    public Not copy()
    {
        return new Not();
    }

    @Override
    public int parse(String[] tokens, int pos, Stack<Expression> stack)
    {
        int i = findNextExpression(tokens, pos+1, stack);
        Expression right = stack.pop();

        this.rightOperand = right;
        stack.push(this);

        return i;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean interpret(final Map<String, ?> bindings)
    {
        return !this.rightOperand.interpret(bindings);
    }    
}

The = operator is used to check the value of a variable if it actually equals a specific value in the bindings map provided as argument in the interpret method.

import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Stack;

public class Equals extends Operation
{      
    public Equals()
    {
        super("=");
    }

    @Override
    public Equals copy()
    {
        return new Equals();
    }

    @Override
    public int parse(final String[] tokens, int pos, Stack<Expression> stack)
    {
        if (pos-1 >= 0 && tokens.length >= pos+1)
        {
            String var = tokens[pos-1];

            this.leftOperand = new Variable(var);
            this.rightOperand = BaseType.getBaseType(tokens[pos+1]);
            stack.push(this);

            return pos+1;
        }
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Cannot assign value to variable");
    }

    @Override
    public boolean interpret(Map<String, ?> bindings)
    {
        Variable v = (Variable)this.leftOperand;
        Object obj = bindings.get(v.getName());
        if (obj == null)
            return false;

        BaseType<?> type = (BaseType<?>)this.rightOperand;
        if (type.getType().equals(obj.getClass()))
        {
            if (type.getValue().equals(obj))
                return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
}

As can be seen from the parse method a value is assigned to a variable with the variable being on the left side of the = symbol and the value on the right side.

Moreover the interpretation checks for the availability of the variable name in the variable bindings. If it is not available we know that this term can not evaluate to true so we can skip the evaluation process. If it is present, we extract the information from the right hand side (=Value part) and first check if the class type is equal and if so if the actual variable value matches the binding.

As the actual parsing of the expressions is refactored into the operations, the actual parser is rather slim:

import java.util.Stack;

public class ExpressionParser
{
    private static final Operations operations = Operations.INSTANCE;

    public static Expression fromString(String expr)
    {
        Stack<Expression> stack = new Stack<>();

        String[] tokens = expr.split("\s");
        for (int i=0; i < tokens.length-1; i++)
        {
            Operation op = operations.getOperation(tokens[i]);
            if ( op != null )
            {
                // create a new instance
                op = op.copy();
                i = op.parse(tokens, i, stack);
            }
        }

        return stack.pop();
    }
}

Here the copy method is probably the most interesting thing. As the parsing is rather generic, we do not know in advance which operation is currently processed. On returning a found operation among the registered ones results in a modification of this object. If we only have one operation of that kind in our expression this does not matter - if we however have multiple operations (f.e. two or more equals-operations) the operation is reused and therefore updated with the new value. As this also changes previously created operations of that kind we need to create a new instance of the operation - copy() achieves this.

Operations is a container which holds previously registered operations and maps the operation to a specified symbol:

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Set;

public enum Operations
{
    /** Application of the Singleton pattern using enum **/
    INSTANCE;

    private final Map<String, Operation> operations = new HashMap<>();

    public void registerOperation(Operation op, String symbol)
    {
        if (!operations.containsKey(s