Jason Lee - Java 9: Building Robust Modular Applications

To use Payara Micro, we create a Java web application like we normally would. In NetBeans, we will select File | New Project | Maven | Web Application and click on Next . For the project name, enter monumentum, select the appropriate Project Location , and fix up the Group ID and Package as desired:

The next window will ask us to choose a server, which we can leave blank, and a Java EE version, which we want to set to Java EE 7 Web :

After a few moments, we should have our project created and ready to go. Since we created a Java EE 7 web application, NetBeans has already added the Java EE API dependency to the project. Before we jump into coding, let's add Payara Micro to the build to get that part ready. To do that, we need to add a plugin to the build. That will look something like this (though we've only shown the highlights here):

This sets up the Maven exec plugin, which is used to execute either an external application or, as we'll do here, a Java application:

Here, we're associating the execution of this plugin with Maven's package phase. This means that when we run Maven to build our project, the plugin's java goal will be run as Maven starts to package the project, allowing us to alter exactly what gets packaged in the JAR:

This last section configures the plugin. It will run the PayaraMicro class, passing the --deploy --outputUberJar ... command. Effectively, we're telling Payara Micro how to run our application, but, rather than executing the package right now, we want it to create an uber JAR that will run the application later.

The problem with the setup is that, left as is, when we build, we'll get an uber JAR, but we won't have any easy way to run the application from NetBeans. To fix that, we need a slightly different plugin configuration. Specifically, it needs these lines:

These replace the preceding deploy and outputUberJar options. To help speed up our builds, we also don't want the uber JAR created until we ask for it, so we can separate these two plugin configurations into two separate profiles, as follows:

When we're ready to build the deployment artifact, we activate the uber profile when we execute Maven, and we'll get our executable jar:

The exploded-war profile is the configuration that we'll use from the IDE, which runs Payara Micro, pointing it at the exploded war in our build directory. To instruct NetBeans to use that, we need to modify a couple of action configurations. To do that, right-click on the project in NetBeans and select Properties from the bottom of the context menu. Under Actions , find Run Project and select it, then enter exploded-war under Activate Profiles :

If we run the application now, NetBeans will complain because we haven't selected a server. While this is a web application and those have typically needed a server, we're using Payara Micro, so we don't need an application server defined. Fortunately, NetBeans will let us tell it that, as demonstrated in the following screenshot:

Select Ignore, I don't want IDE managed deployment and click on OK , then watch the output window. You should see a fair amount of text scroll by, and after a few seconds, you should see text like this:

Once you see that, we're ready to test our application, such as it is at this point. In your browser, open http://localhost:8080/monumentum-1.0-SNAPSHOT/index.html and you should see a large and exciting Hello World! message on the page. If you see this, you have successfully bootstrapped a Payara Micro project. Take a moment to congratulate yourself, and then we'll make the application do something useful.