Class Definitions (Tools/APIs)

Work with class definitions and class members programmatically (obtain information about, define, make deployed, and so on).

Background Information

For information on creating class definitions in InterSystems IRIS®, see Defining and Using Classes and the Class Definition Reference. In InterSystems IRIS, a class member is a method, property, parameter, or other element of a class definition.

You can examine, compile, and export classes using an integrated development environment (IDE) with support for ObjectScript, such as Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with the InterSystems ObjectScript extension or Studio.

Available Tools

%Dictionary package

Provides persistent classes you can use to examine class definitions, modify class definitions, create new classes, and even write programs that automatically generate documentation. There are two parallel sets of class definition classes: those that represent defined classes and those that represent compiled classes. For example, you can use %Dictionary.ClassDefinitionOpens in a new tab to work with class definitions, and you can use %Dictionary.CompiledClassOpens in a new tab to work with compiled classes.

There are similar classes in the %Library package, but the latter classes are deprecated.

See Class Definition Classes in Defining and Using Classes.

Availability: All namespaces.

%SYSTEM.OBJ class

Provides methods for working with class definitions and other Studio items. These include:

Compile()
Delete()
Export()
ExportAllClasses()
GetClassList()
GetDependencies()
IsUpToDate()
MakeClassDeployed()
ShowClasses()
UnCompile()
Upgrade()
And others

Availability: All namespaces.

Note

The special variable $SYSTEM is bound to the %SYSTEM package. This means that instead of ##class(%SYSTEM.class).method(), you can use $SYSTEM.class.method().

Concurrency Mode (Tools/APIs)

C (Tools/APIs)