The following steps describe how to set up your development environment. In the process,
you'll learn about some of the primary windows of the IDE and understand how the IDE
uses an Ant build script to perform
common actions on your project. By the end of this tutorial unit, you'll have created
a web application project, and confirmed that you can successfully build the project,
deploy it to your development server, and run it from the IDE.
You also learn how to connect the IDE to a MySQL database server, create database
instances, and connect to database instances from the IDE's Services window. In
this unit, you create a new database named affablebean, which you
will use throughout the tutorial.
The NetBeans IDE requires the Java Development Kit (JDK) to run properly.
If you do not have any of the resources listed above, the JDK should be
the first item that you download and install.
The NetBeans IDE Java Bundle includes Java Web and EE technologies, which are
required for the application you build in this tutorial.
The NetBeans IDE Java Bundle also includes the GlassFish server,
which you require for this tutorial. You could
download
the GlassFish server independently, but the version provided with the
NetBeans download has the added benefit of being automatically registered with
the IDE.
Creating a Web Project
Start the NetBeans IDE. If you are running the IDE for the first time, you
will see the IDE's Start Page.
Click the New Project ( ) button (Ctrl-Shift-N; ⌘-Shift-N on Mac) to create
a new Java web project. The New Project wizard opens to guide you through the
process. Under Categories choose Java Web, then under Projects choose Web
Application.
Click Next.
In Step 2: Name and Location, name the project AffableBean. In
this step, you can also designate the location on your computer where the project
will reside. By default, the IDE creates a NetBeansProjects folder
in your home directory. If you'd like to change the location, enter the path in
the Project Location text field.
Click Next.
In Step 3: Server and Settings, specify GlassFish v3 as the server to which
your project will be deployed during development. Since you've included GlassFish
v3 in your NetBeans installation, you'll see that GlassFish v3 is listed in the
Server drop-down field.
If you wanted to deploy to a server that isn't yet registered
with the IDE, you would click the Add button, and step through the Add Server
Instance wizard. You can view all servers registered with the IDE from the
Servers window (Choose Tools > Servers from the main menu).
For Java EE Version, select Java EE 6 Web.
The application that you create makes use of various Java EE 6 features, namely
servlet annotations (new in the Servlet
3.0 Specification), and EJBs used directly in servlet containers (new in the
EJB 3.1 Specification).
Both Servlet 3.0 and EJB 3.1 are part of the Java EE 6 platform, therefore you
require an EE-6 compliant server such as GlassFish v3 to work through this tutorial.
For more information, see About Specifications
and Implementations.
Make sure that the 'Enable Contexts and Dependency Injection' option is deselected.
This option is specific to the Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) technology,
specified by JSR-299,
and is not used in this tutorial. For more information, see Getting
Started with Contexts and Dependency Injection and JSF 2.0.
Note that by default the context path for the application is the name of the
project. This is the path at which your application can be accessed after it
is deployed to the server. For example, GlassFish uses 8080 as its default port
number, so during development you'll be able to access the project in a browser
window from:
Examine the IDE's default layout. Here's a brief overview of the displayed windows and tabs:
The Editor: The editor (Ctrl-0; ⌘-0 on Mac) is the
central component of the IDE, and is likely where you'll spend most of your
time. The editor automatically adapts to the language you are working in,
providing documentation support, code-completion, hints and error messages
specific to the technology you are coding in.
Projects window: The Projects window (Ctrl-1; ⌘-1 on Mac)
is the entry point to your project sources. It provides a logical view
of important project contents, and groups files together based on their function
(e.g., Configuration Files). When right-clicking file nodes within
the Projects window, you can call actions common to your development tasks (i.e.,
Build, Clean, Deploy, Run).
Files window: The Files window (Ctrl-2; ⌘-2 on Mac)
provides a directory-based view of your project. That is, it enables you to
view the structure of your project, as it exists in your computer's file system.
From this window, you can view all files pertaining to your project, including
the Ant build script, (build.xml), and files required by the IDE
to handle the project (contained in the nbproject folder). If you've
run your project, you can see the location of compiled Java files (build
folder). If you've explicitly built your project (by choosing Build, or Clean and
Build, from the project node's right-click menu in the Projects window), you can
view the project's distributable WAR file (contained in the dist
folder).
Navigator: The Navigator (Ctrl-7; ⌘-7 on Mac) provides
a structural overview of the file opened in the editor. For example, if an HTML
web page is displayed, the Navigator lists tag nodes in a way that corresponds to
the page's Document Object Model (DOM). If a Java class is opened in the editor,
the Navigator displays the properties and methods pertaining to that class. You
can use the Navigator to navigate to items within the editor. For example, when
you double-click a node in the Navigator, your cursor is taken directly to that
element in the editor.
Tasks window: The Tasks window (Ctrl-6; ⌘-6 on Mac)
automatically scans your code and lists lines with compile errors, quick fixes,
and style warnings. For Java classes, it also lists commented lines containing
words such as 'TODO' or 'FIXME'.
Services window: The Services window (Ctrl-5; ⌘-5 on Mac)
provides an interface for managing servers, web services, databases and
database connections, as well as other services relating to team development.
Output window:(Not displayed) The Output window (Ctrl-4;
⌘-4 on Mac) automatically displays when you call an action that invokes a
service, generally from an outside resource such as a server, and can mirror
server log files. With web projects, it also enables you to view information
related to Ant tasks (e.g., Build, Clean and Build,
Clean).
Palette:(Not displayed) The Palette (Ctrl-Shift-8;
⌘-Shift-8 on Mac) provides various handy code snippets that you can drag
and drop into the editor. Many of the snippets included in the Palette are also
accessible by invoking code completion in the editor, as will later be demonstrated.
Note: All of the IDE's windows can be accessed from the
Window menu item.
Running the Web Project
Run the new AffableBean project. In the Projects window, you can do
this by right-clicking the project node and choosing Run, otherwise, click the
Run Project ( ) button (F6; fn-F6 on Mac) in the IDE's main toolbar.
A browser window opens to display the project's welcome page.
So what just happened? When you run a web project, the IDE invokes the run
Ant target in your project's build script. You can investigate by opening your project's
build.xml file in the editor.
Switch to the Files window (Ctrl-2; ⌘-2 on Mac), expand the project node and
double-click the build.xml file contained in your project. When the
build.xml file opens in the editor, the Navigator lists all Ant targets
available to the script.
Normal Ant targets are displayed using the general target (
) icon. The emphasized Ant target (
) icon merely indicates that the target
includes a description, which is displayed as a tooltip (as shown in the above
image). For more information, see
Creating, Importing, and Configuring
Java Projects.
Double-click the run target. The build-impl.xml file
opens in the editor and displays the target definition.
<target depends="run-deploy,run-display-browser" description="Deploy to server and show in browser." name="run"/>
Why did the build-impl.xml file open when we clicked on a target from
build.xml? If you switch back to build.xml (press Ctrl-Tab)
and examine the file contents, you'll see the following line:
<import file="nbproject/build-impl.xml"/>
The project's build script is basically an empty file that imports NetBeans-defined
targets from nbproject/build-impl.xml.
You can freely edit your project's standard build.xml
script by adding new targets or overriding existing NetBeans-defined targets.
However, you should not edit the build-impl.xml file.
You can see from the run target's definition that it depends on the
following targets:
run-deploy
run-display-browser
Both of these targets in turn depend on other targets, which you can examine
elsewhere in the build-impl.xml file. But essentially, the following
actions take place when the run target is invoked:
The project gets compiled.
A WAR file is created.
The server starts (if it is not already running).
The WAR file gets deployed to the designated server.
The browser opens to display the server's URL and application's
context path.
Consult the official Ant
Manual for more information on using Ant.
To generate a distributable WAR file for your project, choose Clean and Build Project
(or Clean and Build Main Project) from the IDE's Run menu.
In the Files window (Ctrl-2; ⌘-2 on Mac) expand the project
node. The dist folder contains the project WAR file.
The build folder contains your compiled project.
Note: If you clean the project (In the
Projects window, choose Clean from the project node's right-click menu), both
of these folders are removed.
Switch to the Services window (Ctrl-5; ⌘-5 on Mac) and expand the Servers
> GlassFish Server 3 > Applications node.
Note: "GlassFish v3" is the default server name for NetBeans 6.8 users.
The green arrow icon on the GlassFish server node (
) indicates that the server is
running. The Applications folder lists all deployed applications; you can see
that the AffableBean application has been successfully deployed.
At this stage, you've created a Java web project in the IDE, and have confirmed
that it can be successfully built and deployed to your development server, and
opened in a browser when run.
Communicating with the Database Server
Once you've downloaded and installed the MySQL database server, you can connect to
it from the IDE. A default installation uses 'root' and '' (an empty
string) as the user account and password to connect to the database server. However,
due to connectivity issues with GlassFish, it is recommended that you use an account
with a non-empty password.[1]
The following instructions demonstrate how to run the database server
and change the password for the root account to 'nbuser'
from the MySQL command-line. The 'root' / 'nbuser'
combination is used throughout the NetBeans E-commerce Tutorial. With the database
server running and properly configured, you register it in the IDE and create a
database instance.
Note: The command-line instructions below assume that
you have added the mysql command to your PATH environment
variable. (If you haven't, you'll receive a 'mysql: command not found'
error when entering mysql commands in your command-line.)
If you haven't added mysql to your PATH, you can instead
call the command by entering the full path to your MySQL installation's bin
directory. For example, if the mysql command is located on your computer
at /usr/local/mysql/bin, you would enter the following:
shell> /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root
For more information, see the offical MySQL Reference Manual:
Before connecting to the MySQL server from the IDE, you need to make sure the
server is running. One way to do this is by using the
mysqladmin
client's ping command.
Open a command-line prompt and type in the following:
shell> mysqladmin ping
If the server is running, you will see output similar to the following:
mysqld is alive
If the server is not running, you'll see output similar to the following:
mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock'
Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/tmp/mysql.sock' exists!
Start the Database Server
In the event that your MySQL server is not running, you can start it from
the command-line. See 2.13.1.2. Starting and Stopping MySQL Automatically for a brief,
cross-platform overview. The following steps provide general guidance depending on your
operating system.
Unix-like systems:
For Unix-like systems, it is recommended to start the MySQL server by invoking
mysqld_safe.
Open a command-line prompt and run the mysqld_safe command:
shell> sudo ./mysqld_safe
You will see output similar to the following:
090906 02:14:37 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql/data
Windows:
The MySQL Windows installer enables you to install the database server as a Windows
service, whereby MySQL starts and stops automatically with the operating system.
If you need to start the database manually, run the
mysqld
command from the installation directory's bin folder.
Open a Windows console window (from the Start menu, choose Run and type cmd
in the text field). A command-line window displays.
Enter this command (The indicated path assumes you have installed version 5.1 to
the default install location):
C:\> "C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin\mysqld"
The IDE's Services window enables you to connect to the server, start and stop the
server, view database instances and the data they contain, as well as run an external
administration tool on the server.
In the Services window, right-click the Databases node and choose Register
MySQL Server.
In the MySQL Server Properties dialog, under the Basic Properties tab, you
can see the default settings for the MySQL server installation. These are:
Server Host Name:localhost
Server Port Number:3306
Administrator User Name:root
Administrator Password:nbuser
Select the Save Password option.
Click OK. The IDE connects to your MySQL database server, and lists database
instances that are maintained by the server. If you expand the Drivers node,
you can also see that the IDE contains the
Connector/J
JDBC driver for MySQL.
The application server (i.e., GlassFish) requires the driver to enable communication
between your Java code and the the MySQL database. Because the IDE already contains
the Connector/J driver, you do not need to download it. Furthermore, as will later
be demonstrated, you can specify in your server settings to enable JDBC driver
deployment so that the driver will be automatically deployed to GlassFish if it
is missing on the server.
Steps 4-7 below are optional. You can configure the IDE to start and stop the
MySQL server, as well as run an external administration tool on the server.
Right-click the MySQL server node and choose Properties. In the MySQL Server
Properties dialog, select the Admin Properties tab.
In the 'Path/URL to admin tool' field, enter the path on your computer to the
executable file of a database administration tool, such as
MySQL
Administrator. The MySQL Administrator is included in the
MySQL GUI
Tools bundle.
In the 'Path to start command' field, type in the path to the MySQL start command
(i.e., mysqld or mysqld_safe, depending on your operating
system. (See Start the Database Server above.)
Note: For Unix-like systems, you may find
that you can only invoke the start command with root or administrative
privileges. To overcome this, you can create a script (using
GKSu for Linux and Solaris,
osascript
for Mac) that will accomplish this task. For more information, see
this
blog post.
In the 'Path to stop command' field, enter the path to the MySQL stop command
(i.e., mysqladmin shutdown). Because the command requires a user account
with shutdown privileges, you must enter username/password credentials in the Arguments
field. For example:
Arguments:-u root -pnbuser shutdown
After you have set the fields listed under the Advanced Properties tab, you can:
Start the MySQL server: Right-click the MySQL server node and choose Start.
Stop the MySQL server: Right-click the MySQL server node and choose Stop.
Run the external administration tool: Right-click the MySQL server node and
choose Run Administration Tool.
Create a Database Instance
Create the database instance which you will use in this tutorial. To do so,
right-click the MySQL Server node and choose Create Database.
In the dialog that displays, type in affablebean. Select the
'Grant Full Access to' option, then select from
the drop-down field. This enables the root account on the
localhost host access to the database. Later, when you create
a connection pool on the server, you'll need to provide the root
account and nbuser password as username/password credentials
in order to grant the server access to the database.
Click OK. When you do so, the database named affablebean is created,
and a connection to the database is automatically established. Connections are
displayed in the Services window using a connection node (
).
Note: Connection nodes are persisted in the
Services window. If you restart the IDE, the connection node displays with
a jagged line ( ), indicating that the connection
is broken. To reconnect to a database, make sure that the database server
is running, then right-click the node and choose Connect.
Expand the connection node for the affablebean database. The
connection contains the database's default schema (affablebean),
and within that are nodes for tables, views, and procedures. Currently these
are empty since we haven't created anything yet.
At this stage, you've connected to the MySQL server from the IDE and have created
a new database named affablebean which you'll use throughout the tutorial.
Also, you've created a Java web project in the IDE, and have confirmed that it can be
successfully built and deployed to your development server, and opened in a browser
when run. Now that your development environment is ready, you can begin drafting the
application's data model.
^ Using GlassFish v3, you can create
a connection pool to a MySQL database server using an empty password. GlassFish Open Source Edition
3.0.1, included with NetBeans IDE 6.9, does not enable a connection using an empty password. See
GlassFish
Issue 12221.
) button (Ctrl-Shift-N; ⌘-Shift-N on Mac) to create
a new Java web project. The New Project wizard opens to guide you through the
process. Under Categories choose Java Web, then under Projects choose Web
Application.
) button (F6; fn-F6 on Mac) in the IDE's main toolbar.
) icon. The emphasized Ant target (
) icon merely indicates that the target
includes a description, which is displayed as a tooltip (as shown in the above
image). For more information, see
) indicates that the server is
running. The Applications folder lists all deployed applications; you can see
that the 
).
), indicating that the connection
is broken. To reconnect to a database, make sure that the database server
is running, then right-click the node and choose Connect.
