Introduction server-side-ui-starter

server-side-ui-starter provides you an out-of-the-box application setup to fast start development of a Web Application based on a service side rendering architecture.

It is leveraging Spring Boot as a technology stack, which provides:

• a way to implement Model, View and Controller(s) using Spring Web annotations and Thymeleaf template engine
• an Inversion of Control Container to wire together your classes at running without the need to write tightly-coupled code
• an integrated Web Server, so no need to deploy the built artifact to a separate running web or application server

The application contains example code to have a first public page. This page is built using Thymeleaf and WebJars, so that common web libraries are available without the need to copy and paste them in the resources/static folder.

It provides a way to test the controller logic.

Prerequisites

In order to further develop this application the following tools needs to be setup:

• Java Development Kit (https://bell-sw.com/)
• Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ IDEA as Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
• Tanzu Developer Tools plugin for the mentioned IDE

Local

Build

In order to compile the production code:

./mvnw clean compile

After that it is a good habit to compile the test classes and execute those tests to see if your application is still behaving as you would expect:

./mvnw verify

Start and interact

Spring Boot has its own integrated Web Server (Apache Tomcat (https://tomcat.apache.org/)).

Launch application using default profile:

./mvnw spring-boot:run

Accessing home page

You can access the public page at http://localhost:8080/ by a web browser or using curl:

curl -X GET -H 'Content-Type: application/html' http://localhost:8080/

Deployment

Tanzu Application Platform (TAP)

Using the config/workload.yaml it is possible to build, test and deploy this application onto a Kubernetes cluster that is provisioned with Tanzu Application Platform (https://tanzu.vmware.com/application-platform).

Tanzu CLI

Using the Tanzu CLI one could apply the workload using the local sources:

tanzu apps workload apply \
  --file config/workload.yaml \
  --namespace <namespace> --source-image <image-registry> \
  --local-path . \
  --yes \
  --tail

Change the namespace to where you would like to deploy this workload. Also define the (private) image registry you are allowed to push the source-image, like: docker.io/username/repository.

Visual Studio Code Tanzu Plugin

When developing locally but would like to deploy the local code to the cluster, the Tanzu Plugin could help. By using Tanzu: Apply on the workload.yaml it will create the Workload resource with the local source (pushed to an image registry) as starting point.

How to proceed from here?

Having the application locally running and deployed to a cluster you could add your domain logic, related persistence and new Spring MVC controllers.

Some tips:

• You can add images, additional CSS, etc to src/main/resources/static folder. It will be served by Spring Boot under /static. Those resources can be referenced to by Thymeleaf @ character.
• In order to add a new page, create a new Controller, method and .html file in src/main/resource/template folder.

References

• Spring Boot
• Spring Web MVC
• Tanzu Application Platform
• Tanzu Developer Tools for Visual Studio Code
• Tanzu Developer Tools for IntelliJ
• Thymeleaf
• WebJars