Code and web apps

Chickentown

Hi all,

I have a question I need some help with.

I am a mature student that has been coding in Java for over a year now and I have recently started C in September.

Up till now all my coding has been for either college assignments or problems from the back of the book.

At this stage I would like to do a small application for myself but what I have absolutely no clue about is; lets say for example I write a small application in Netbeans and I want to put this on my website. All I have is this file on my computer containing the code.

What are the general steps needed to take to get this code to work on the website?

ressem

Once you've got the basics of programming on the Netbeans built-in webserver...

Deploying Java code on the internet is a bit more complicated than HTML or Php.

There are fewer services that will run Tomcat / Glassfish and allow you to upload your code.

Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk would probably be the most popular.
There's 3 beginners videos
http://youtu.be/V07apAqsPBk - AWS Setup with a micro deployment
http://youtu.be/THgFU7pc_aE - Adding an AWS deployment key to Netbeans
http://youtu.be/OUfJ_YLadxA - Deploying your Java app to AWS

I'd suggest sticking with amazon. Other options include

Redhat Openshift.

Microsoft's Azure. You've to do the tomcat setup also in the virtual machine they give you. They've got only an eclipse plugin to help out that I know of.

Google App Engine. Kind of encourages you to use Google focused libraries and authentication in your code.

And ones like Heroku that sit on top of Amazon.
The Oracle Java Cloud advertised by netbeans is high priced.

Chickentown

Thanks ressem,

Very helpful, I will look into it.

bpmurray

Install XAMPP and select the Tomcat option - that way you have a local server you can play with.

Chickentown

Any reason in particular why you would suggest this over some of the previous suggestions?

TrueDub

I'd go with bpmurray's suggestion of XAMPP and Tomcat - for a few reasons:

1. It's local to your machine, nothing in the cloud so your apps are private
2. It's easy to fiddle with the settings on a local app
3. Setting up & using app servers like Tomcat are part of webapp development in Java, so it's good experience.

There's actually nothing stopping you just going to the Tomcat site, downloading the latest version for your operating system and installing it - it'll work right away.

Then to run your app there, you'll need to export it as a WAR file from Netbeans, or look at using a build tool like Maven to assist you with this.

There's a lot of learning in Maven, but it would be time well spent.

Graham

Chickentown wrote: »

Hi all,
At this stage I would like to do a small application for myself but what I have absolutely no clue about is; lets say for example I write a small application in Netbeans and I want to put this on my website.

Chickentown wrote: »

What are the general steps needed to take to get this code to work on the website?

bpmurray wrote: »

Install XAMPP and select the Tomcat option - that way you have a local server you can play with.

TrueDub wrote: »

It's local to your machine, nothing in the cloud so your apps are private

?????

TrueDub

Graham wrote: »

?????

Would it have killed you to actually put a question there?

The OP said he wanted to develop an app - this needs to be done locally first, for a whole host of reasons involving ease of deployment, security and expense.

Once his app is in a state that he's happy to make it public (might be 5 mins, or 5 years) he can then use one of the services listed in an earlier post.

Graham

TrueDub wrote: »

Would it have killed you to actually put a question there?

The OP said he wanted to develop an app - this needs to be done locally first, for a whole host of reasons involving ease of deployment, security and expense.

Once his app is in a state that he's happy to make it public (might be 5 mins, or 5 years) he can then use one of the services listed in an earlier post.

The question was 'how are the quoted suggestions going to help the OP get his app onto his website'.

ressem

TrueDub wrote: »

Would it have killed you to actually put a question there?

The OP said he wanted to develop an app - this needs to be done locally first, for a whole host of reasons involving ease of deployment, security and expense.

Once his app is in a state that he's happy to make it public (might be 5 mins, or 5 years) he can then use one of the services listed in an earlier post.

Sorry. No.
bpmurray and yourself aren't noting that the OP has Netbeans installed which by default has a built in webserver or two for development and debugging.

And his post suggest he's looking at how to approach the next step, even if the application isn't ready for primetime yet.

TrueDub

Graham wrote: »

The question was 'how are the quoted suggestions going to help the OP get his app onto his website'.

And we were to guess that from five question marks?

ressem wrote: »

Sorry. No.
bpmurray and yourself aren't noting that the OP has Netbeans installed which by default has a built in webserver or two for development and debugging.

And his post suggest he's looking at how to approach the next step, even if the application isn't ready for primetime yet.

Fair point, I was discounting the built-in servers, mainly because they're usually not brilliant (haven't used Netbeans for years, so could be wrong here). Either way, I still think getting hold of a standard app server and deploying outside of an IDE is an essential step to getting an app into shape.

Graham

TrueDub wrote: »

And we were to guess that from five question marks?

Top marks to you. You managed to answer the question perfectly based on the ????? and highlighted phrases alone.

Chickentown

Thanks guys that was actually really helpful. Definitely not ready for "primetime" yet, just wanted to know what the next stage was. Will start messing around with it over the Christmas.

Thanks again