Creating an application

Please check our video tutorial on creating a new JHipster application!

  1. Quick start
  2. Questions asked when generating an application
  3. Command-line options
  4. Tips

Quick start

First of all, create an empty directory in which you will create your application:

mkdir myapplication

Go to that directory:

cd myapplication/

To generate your application, type:

yo jhipster

Answer the questions asked by the generator to create an application taylored to your needs. Those options are described in the next section.

Once the application is generated, you can launch it using Maven (./mvnw on Linux/MacOS, mvnw.cmd on Windows) or Gradle (./gradlew on Linux/MacOS, gradelw.bat on Windows). You can go the Using JHipster in development page for more information.

The application will be available on http://localhost:8080

Questions asked when generating an application

Some questions change depending on the previous choices you have made. For example, you won’t need to configure an Hibernate cache if you didn’t select an SQL database.

Which type of application would you like to create?

Your type of application depends on whether you wish to use a microservices architecture or not. A full explanation on microservices is available here, if unsure use the default “Monolithic application”.

You can either use:

  • Monolithic application: this a classical, one-size-fits-all application. It’s easier to use and develop, and is our recommended default.
  • Microservice application: in a microservices architecture, this is one of the services.
  • Microservice gateway: in a microservices architecture, this is an edge server that routes and secures requests.

What is the base name of your application?

This is the name of your application.

What is your default Java package name?

Your Java application will use this as its root package. This value is stored by Yeoman so that the next time you run the generator the last value will become default. Of course you can override it by providing a new value.

Which type of authentication would you like to use?

You can either use:

  • A classical session-based authentication mechanism, like we are used to do in Java (this is how most people use Spring Security). You can use this option with Spring Social, which will enable you to use “social login” (such as Google, Facebook, Twitter): this is configured by Spring Boot’s support of Spring Social.
  • An OAuth 2.0 authentication mechanism (JHipster then provides the necessary OAuth2 server code and database tables).
  • A mechanism using JSON Web Token (JWT)

The OAuth 2.0 and the JWT approaches allow to use a stateless application architecture (they do not rely on the HTTP Session). You can find more information on our securing your application page.

Which type of database would you like to use?

You can choose between:

Which production database would you like to use?

This is the database you will use with your “production” profile. To configure it, please modify your src/main/resources/config/application-prod.yml file.

If you want to use Oracle, you will need to install the Oracle JDBC driver manually.

Which development database would you like to use?

This is the database you will use with your “development” profile. You can either use:

  • H2, running in-memory. This is the easiest way to use JHipster, but your data will be lost when you restart your server.
  • H2, with its data stored on disk. This is currently in BETA test (and not working on Windows), but this would eventually be a better option than running in-memory, as you won’t lose your data upon application restart.
  • The same database as the one you chose for production: it’s a bit more complex to set up, but it should be better in the end to work on the same database as the one you will use in production. This is also the best way to use liquibase-hibernate as described in the development guide.

To configure it, please modify your src/main/resources/config/application-dev.yml file.

Do you want to use Hibernate 2nd level cache?

Hibernate is the JPA provider used by JHipster. For performance reasons, we highly recommend you to use a cache, and to tune it according to your application’s needs. If you choose to do so, you can use either ehcache (local cache) or Hazelcast (distributed cache, for use in a clustered environnement)

Do you want to use a search engine in your application?

Elasticsearch will be configured using Spring Data Elasticsearch. You can find more information on our Elasticsearch guide.

Do you want to use clustered HTTP sessions?

By default, JHipster uses a HTTP session only for storing Spring Security’s authentication and autorisations information. Of course, you can choose to put more data in your HTTP sessions. Using HTTP sessions will cause issues if you are running in a cluster, especially if you don’t use a load balancer with “sticky sessions”. If you want to replicate your sessions inside your cluster, choose this option to have Hazelcast configured.

Do you want to use WebSockets?

Websockets can be enabled using Spring Websocket. We also provide a complete sample to show you how to use the framework efficiently.

Would you like to use Maven or Gradle?

You can build your generated Java application either with Maven or Gradle. Maven is more stable and more mature. Gradle is more flexible, easier to extend, and more hype.

Would you like to use the LibSass stylesheet preprocessor for your CSS?

Node-sass a great solution to simplify designing CSS. To be used efficiently, you will need to run a Gulp server, which will be configured automatically.

Would you like to enable translation support with Angular Translate?

By default JHipster provides excellent internationalization support, both on the client side with Angular Translate and on the server side. However, internationalization adds a little overhead, and is a little bit more complex to manage, so you can choose not to install this feature.

Which testing frameworks would you like to use?

By default JHipster provide Java unit/integration testing (using Spring’s JUnit support) and JavaScript unit testing (using Karma.js). As an option, you can also add support for:

  • Performance tests using Gatling
  • Behaviour tests using Cucumber
  • AngularJS integration tests with Protractor

You can find more information on our “Running tests” guide.

Command-line options

You can also run JHipster with some optional command-line options. Reference for those options can be found by typing yo jhipster --help.

Here are the options you can pass:

  • --help - Print the generator’s options and usage
  • --skip-cache - Do not remember prompt answers (Default: false)
  • --skip-install - Do not automatically install dependencies (Default: false)
  • --skip-client - Skip the client-side application generation, so you only have the Spring Boot back-end code generated (Default: false). This is same as running server sub-generator with yo jhipster:server.
  • --skip-server - Skip the server-side application generation, so you only have the AngularJS front-end code generated (Default: false). This is same as running client sub-generator with yo jhipster:client.
  • --skip-user-management - Skip the user management generation, both on the back-end and on the front-end (Default: false)
  • --i18n - Disable or enable i18n when skipping client side generation, has no effect otherwise (Default: true)
  • --with-entities - Regenerate the existing entities if they were already generated (using their configuration in the .jhipster folder) (Default: false)
  • --check-install - Check your installation is correct (Default: true)

Tips

If you are an advanced user you can use our client and server sub-generators by running yo jhipster:client --[options] and yo jhipster:server --[options]. Run the above sub-generators with --help flag to view all the options that can be passed.

You can also use the Yeoman command-line options, like --force to automatically overwrite existing files. So if you want to regenerate your whole application, including its entities, you can run yo jhipster --force --with-entities.