Getting Started With jHipster, Part 1

Matt McCandlessSeptember 28th, 2016Last Updated: September 27th, 2016

0 93 3 minutes read

So, you want to stay on the leading edge of technology, but feel overwhelmed by all the moving parts. You’re in luck! This is where jHipster shines.

If you like the Ruby on Rails or Grails approach to getting an application up-and-running in a hurry, then this may be the right fit for you. jHipster aims to make setting-up an app fairly painless.

In this jHipster series we are going to take you through, first, creating a monolithic application. Secondly, we will make an app in the microservices style. Last, we’ll give you some tips and tricks.

jHipster – What is it?

jHipster’s goal is to generate for you a complete and modern web app, unifying:

A high-performance and robust Java stack on the server-side with Spring Boot
A sleek, modern, mobile-first front-end with AngularJS and Bootstrap
A powerful workflow to build your application with Yeoman, Bower, Gulp and Maven

Who’s using it?

https://jhipster.github.io/companies-using-jhipster/

Overview

Client-side Stack

Responsive web design
HTML5 boilerplate
Twitter Bootstrap
AngularJS
Compatible with IE9+ and modern browsers
Full internationalization support with Angular Translate
Optional Sass support for CSS design
Optional WebSocket support with Spring Websocket

Server-side Stack

Spring Boot for easy application configuration
Maven or Gradle configuration for building, testing, and running the application “development” and “production” profiles (both for Maven and Gradle)
Spring Security
Spring MVC REST + Jackson
Optional WebSocket support with Spring Websocket
Spring Data JPA + Bean Validation
Database updates with Liquibase
Elasticsearch support if you want to have search capabilities on top of your database
MongoDB support if you’d rather use a document-oriented NoSQL database instead of JPA
Cassandra support if you’d rather use a column-oriented NoSQL database instead of JPA

Production Utilities and the Like

Monitoring with Metrics
Caching with ehcache (local cache) or hazelcast (distributed cache)
Optional HTTP session clustering with hazelcast
Optimized static resources (gzip filter, HTTP cache headers)
Log management with Logback, configurable at runtime
Connection pooling with HikariCP for optimum performance
Builds a standard WAR file or an executable JAR file

Installation is a Breeze

npm install of yo, bower, gulp, generator-jhipster
Vagrant support
Docker support

Monolithic or Microservice

The first question JHipster will ask you is what kind of application you want to generate. You have in fact the choice between two architecture styles.

Choose which one you want at build – Monolith or Microservice
Maven or Gradle
Other DB support (Oracle separate)

A “monolithic” architecture uses a single, one-size-fits-all application, which contains both the front-end AngularJS code, and the back-end Spring Boot code. A “microservices” architecture splits the front-end and the back-end, so that it’s easier for your application to scale and survive infrastructure issues.

A monolithic application is much easier to work on, so if you don’t have any specific requirements, this is the option we recommend, and our default option.

Monolithic path

The red pill

If you have been building web apps for any length of time, more than likely you are all too familiar with the monolithic approach. One huge application that contains everything. This is the “red pill;” life as pretty much you are accustomed to.

The nice thing about JHipster is its ability to bundle up a ton of stuff out of the box for you. No questions about what security should I use, or what will I have to learn if I choose this “new” technology.

Let’s Do This

We will be pretty much following JHipster’s quick-start guide https://jhipster.github.io/#quick for this exercise.

Install JHipster npm install -g generator-jhipster
Create a new directory and go into it myApp && cd myApp
Run JHipster and follow instructions on screen yo jhipster
**Model your entities with JDL Studio and download the resulting jhipster-jdl.jh file
**Generate your entities with yo jhipster:import-jdl jhipster-jdl.jh
* Assuming you have already installed Java, Git, Node.js, Bower, Yeoman and Gulp
**These are optional steps

Give It a Try

Type in yo jhipster, give it a minute…

Answer the questions
Pick what you want!!!
After question 16, go grab some coffee or take a stroll. It will take a while.

Get that drink and/or have a nice walk? When what seems like an eternity has passed, you’ll see this.

Boot time!!

So, in my humble-of-humblest opinions, if you are dealing with Spring Boot and aren’t using STS (Spring Tool Suite), you may need to see a neurologist. It is by far the easiest way to fire up Boot apps. I digress, back to the task at hand.

In STS, add your project (import, etc). It will look something like below. If you didn’t bring in as a Maven project (or Gradle) then add the configuration via STS. You will see the “myApp” in the Boot Dashboard. Go ahead and fire it up.