Create and Run Your First ZK Application with Spring Boot

The zk-spring-boot Example

The example project is located on github/zkoss-demo/zk-spring-boot. To use it all you need is a command line interface (and optional: git).

This example is based on the Spring Boot - Getting Started Guide extending it by adding the required ZK dependencies and necessary configuration in order to start a ZK project with the Spring Boot platform.

Download/Clone the example project

With the git command line installed all you need is to clone the example repository:

   git clone https://github.com/zkoss-demo/zk-spring-boot.git

Alternatively you can download the example as a zip-package.

Once cloned/unzipped open a command line in the project folder.

In order to get started immediately the project includes the gradle-wrapper and maven-wrapper.

The first time you'll execute any of the commands in the following section gradle/maven will download itself automatically and all the required project dependencies. This will initially take quite a few minutes while showing the overall progress. Subsequent executions will be faster as gradle/maven will cache once downloaded resources. For addtional information on gradle/maven please refer to the official documentations.

Useful build tasks

NOTE: Using the windows command line (cmd) you have to omit the "./" in front of the commands e.g.

gradlew clean

build the war file (in the subfolder build/libs/zk-gradle.war)

with gradle-wrapper

./gradlew clean build

with maven-wrapper

./mvnw clean package

Run the Project

for gradle:

java -jar build/libs/zk-spring-boot-0.1.0.jar

for maven

java -jar target/zk-spring-boot-0.1.0.jar

After a short startup time you'll see an output like this.

... Started ServerConnector@5536379e{HTTP/1.1,[http/1.1]}{0.0.0.0:8080}
... Jetty started on port(s) 8080 (http/1.1)
... Started Application in 4.328 seconds (JVM running for 4.987)

Import a Gradle project into your IDE

The project itself designed to work from command line and independent of any IDE. Since it's both a gradle or maven project you can import it into your favorite IDE using the provided plugins.

TIP: The main class zk.springboot.Application can be executed directly in your IDE for development and debugging.