Vaadin Gradle Skeleton Starter

This project demos the possibility of having Vaadin project in npm+webpack mode using Gradle. Please see the Starting a Vaadin project using Gradle for the documentation.

Prerequisites:

• Java 17 or higher
• Git
• (Optionally): Intellij Ultimate
• (Optionally): Node.js and npm, if you have JavaScript/TypeScript customisations in your project.
  • You can either let the Vaadin Gradle plugin to install Node.js and npm/pnpm for you automatically, or you can install it to your OS:
  • Windows: node.js Download site - use the .msi 64-bit installer
  • Linux: sudo apt install npm

Vaadin Versions

• The v24 branch (the default one) contains the example app for Vaadin latest version
• See other branches for other Vaadin versions.

Running With Gretty In Development Mode

Run the following command in this repo:

./gradlew clean appRun

Now you can open the http://localhost:8080 with your browser.

Building In Production Mode

Simply run the following command in this repo:

./gradlew clean build -Pvaadin.productionMode

That will build this app in production mode as a WAR archive; please find the WAR file in build/libs/base-starter-gradle.war. You can run the WAR file by using Jetty Runner:

cd build/libs/
wget https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/eclipse/jetty/jetty-runner/11.0.15/jetty-runner-11.0.15.jar
java -jar jetty-runner-11.0.15.jar base-starter-gradle.war

Now you can open the http://localhost:8080 with your browser.

Building In Production On CI

Usually the CI images will not have node.js+npm available. Luckily Vaadin will download nodejs and npm/pnpm automatically, there is nothing you need to do. To build your app for production in CI, just run:

./gradlew clean build -Pvaadin.productionMode

Running/Debugging In Intellij Ultimate With Tomcat in Development Mode

• Download and unpack the newest Tomcat 10.
• Open this project in Intellij Ultimate.
• Click "Edit Launch Configurations", click "Add New Configuration" (the upper-left button which looks like a plus sign +), then select Tomcat Server, Local. In the Server tab, the Application Server will be missing, click the "Configure" button and point Intellij to the Tomcat directory.
  • Still in the launch configuration, in the "Deployment" tab, click the upper-left + button, select "Artifact" and select base-starter-gradle.war (exploded).
  • Still in the launch configuration, name the configuration "Tomcat" and click the "Ok" button.

Now make sure Vaadin is configured to be run in development mode - run:

./gradlew clean vaadinPrepareFrontend

• Select the "Tomcat" launch configuration and hit Debug (the green bug button).

If Tomcat fails to start with Error during artifact deployment. See server log for details., please:

• Go and vote for IDEA-178450.
• Then, kill Tomcat by pressing the red square button.
• Then, open the launch configuration, "Deployment", remove the (exploded) war, click + and select base-starter-gradle.war.

Running/Debugging In Intellij Community With Gretty in Development Mode

Make sure Vaadin is configured to be run in development mode - run:

./gradlew clean vaadinPrepareFrontend

In Intellij, open the right Gradle tab, then go into Tasks / gretty, right-click the appRun task and select Debug. Gretty will now start in debug mode, and will auto-deploy any changed resource or class.

There are a couple of downsides:

• Even if started in Debug mode, debugging your app won't work.
• Pressing the red square "Stop" button will not kill the server and will leave it running. Instead, you have to focus the console and press any key - that will kill Gretty cleanly.
• If Gretty says "App already running", there is something running on port 8080. See above on how to kill Gretty cleanly.