forge-from-scratch: Example Showing How Forge Can Generate an Application From Scratch

Author: Lincoln Baxter

What is it?

This is an example of creating a fully Java EE compliant project using nothing but JBoss Forge. Once generated, the sample project will be a standard Maven 3 Java Web project with JPA 2.0, EJB 3.1, CDI 1.0, JSF 2.0 views for creating, reading, updating and deleting records, and complete JAX-RS endpoints for all data Entities.

But that is not all! You can use Forge on your new or existing projects to continue enhancing any application.

System requirements

The application this project produces is designed to be run on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6 or JBoss AS 7.

All you need to build this project is Java 6.0 (Java SDK 1.6) or better, and an JBoss Developer Studio 5 or JBoss Forge version 1.0.0.Final (or higher).

###JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6

If you are using JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, Forge is available in JBoss Developer Studio 5. To show the Forge Console, navigate to Window -> Show View -> Other…, locate Forge Console and click OK. Then click the Start button in top right corner of the view.

###JBoss AS 7

If you are using JBoss AS 7, you should install JBoss Forge version 1.0.0.Final or higher. Follow the instructions at Installing Forge.

Then, you need to launch Forge from your console

forge

With the prerequisites out of the way, you are ready to build and deploy. Generating, Building, and Deploying the application

Change to the directory where this README.md file is located, using the cd command.

 forge> cd /path/to/quickstart/forge-from-scratch/

Notice that there is a file called generate.fsh in this directory; run from Forge using the run command:

 forge> run generate.fsh

This command will prompt you for the {project-name} (E.g: 'example'), and will also prompt for the top level package. This should be the domain for your organization. (E.g: 'com.example')

What did we create?

This quickstart has set up a native Java EE 6 application. After this command completes, look in your QUICKSTART_HOME/forge-from-scratch/ folder. You will see a folder with the same name as the project-name you entered in the prompt above. Browse through this project to see the code that was generated as a result of this command. For a full description of what was generated by running this script and details on the structure of the application, visit the Forge UI Scaffolding Guide

Deploy and test the newly generated application

Next, you need to start JBoss AS 7 (or EAP 6). To do this, run

$JBOSS_HOME/bin/standalone.sh

or if you are using windows

$JBOSS_HOME/bin/standalone.bat

To build the application, type 'build', then to deploy the application, use the 'jboss-as-7' Forge plugin; just type:

 forge> forge install-plugin jboss-as-7
 forge> as7 setup
 forge> as7 deploy

This will deploy target/{project-name}.war.

The application will be running at the following URL http://localhost:8080/{project-name}/. You may access it at this URL, just make sure to replace {project-name} with the name of the project you chose when running the script.

To undeploy from JBoss AS, run this command:

 forge> as7 undeploy

You can also start JBoss AS 7 and deploy the project using Eclipse. See the JBoss AS 7 Getting Started Guide for Developers for more information.

Next Steps

Open generate.fsh and take a look inside! There is not much magic happening here. All of the commands used to generate this project are clearly listed just as if they were typed by your own hands.

Play around with creating more entities, relationships, UI, and generating JAX-RS endpoints, all with just a few simple commands.

Explore plugins!

Forge has a rich plugin ecosystem. Want to deploy your application to the Cloud? Use the Forge Openshift Express plugin: http://github.com/forge/plugin-openshift-express/

To see a full list of avaialable plugins, make sure that you have an active internet connection and type:

 forge> forge find-plugin *

Importing the project into an IDE

If you created the project using the Forge Console in JBoss Tools, then there is nothing to do; the projet should already be imported.

If you created the project from a Forge console running outside of the IDE, then you need to import the project into your IDE. If you are using NetBeans 6.8 or IntelliJ IDEA 9, then all you have to do is open the project as an existing project. Both of these IDEs recognize Maven projects natively.

Downloading the sources and Javadocs

If you want to be able to debug into the source code or look at the Javadocs of any library in the project, you can run either of the following two commands to pull them into your local repository. The IDE should then detect them.

forge> mvn dependency:sources
forge> mvn dependency:resolve -Dclassifier=javadoc