Spring MVC - Environment Setup
This chapter will guide us on how to prepare a development environment to start your work with the Spring Framework. This chapter will also teach us how to setup JDK, Tomcat and Eclipse on your machine before you setup the Spring Framework −
Step 1 - Setup Java Development Kit (JDK)
You can download the latest version from Oracle's Java site − Java SE Downloads. You will find instructions for installing JDK in downloaded files, follow the given instructions to install and configure the setup. Once done with the setup, set PATH and JAVA_HOME environment variables to refer to the directory that containsjava and javac, typically java_install_dir/bin and java_install_dir respectively.
If you are running Windows and installed the JDK in C:\jdk1.6.0_15, you would have to put the following line in your C:\autoexec.bat file.
set PATH = C:\jdk1.6.0_15\bin;%PATH%
set JAVA_HOME = C:\jdk1.6.0_15
Alternatively, on Windows NT/2000/XP, you could also right-click on My Computer → select Properties → Advanced → Environment Variables. Then, you would update the PATH value and click on the OK button.
On UNIX (Solaris, Linux, etc.), if the SDK is installed in /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_15 and you use the C shell, then you should key-in the following command into your .cshrc file.
setenv PATH /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_15/bin:$PATH
setenv JAVA_HOME /usr/local/jdk1.6.0_15
Alternatively, if you use an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like Borland JBuilder, Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA or Sun ONE Studio, then compile and run a simple program to confirm that the IDE knows where Java is installed, otherwise do proper setup as given in the documents of IDE.
Step 2 − Install Apache Common Logging API
You can download the latest version of Apache Commons Logging API from https://commons.apache.org/logging/. Once you have downloaded the installation, unpack the binary distribution into a convenient location.
For example – C:\commons-logging-1.1.1 on windows, or /usr/local/commons-logging1.1.1 on Linux/Unix. This directory will have the following jar files and other supporting documents, etc.
Make sure you set your CLASSPATH variable on this directory properly, otherwise you will face problem while running your application.
Step 3 - Setup Eclipse IDE
All the examples in this tutorial have been written using the Eclipse IDE. Therefore, it is recommended that we should have the latest version of Eclipse installed on the machine.
To install Eclipse IDE, download the latest Eclipse binaries from the following link https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/. Once the installation is downloaded, unpack the binary distribution into a convenient location.
For example in – C:\eclipse on windows, or /usr/local/eclipse on Linux/Unix and finally set PATH variable appropriately.
Eclipse can be started by executing the following commands on a windows machine, or we can simply double click on the eclipse.exe.
%C:\eclipse\eclipse.exe
Eclipse can be started by executing the following commands on a UNIX (Solaris, Linux, etc.) machine −
$/usr/local/eclipse/eclipse
After a successful startup, if everything is fine, then it should display the following screen.
Step 4 - Setup Spring Framework Libraries
Now if everything is fine, then we can proceed to setup the Spring Framework. Following are the steps to download and install the framework on the machine.
Make a choice whether you want to install Spring on Windows or UNIX and then proceed to the next step to download .zip file for windows and .tz file for Unix.
Download the latest version of Spring framework binaries from https://repo.spring.io/release/org/springframework/spring.
We have downloaded the spring-framework-4.3.1.RELEASE-dist.zip on the Windows Machine and when we unzip the downloaded file, it will give out the directory structure inside – E:\spring as follows.
You will find all the Spring libraries in the directory E:\spring\libs. Make sure you set your CLASSPATH variable on this directory properly; otherwise, we will face a problem while running the application. If we use Eclipse, then it is not required to set the CLASSPATH because all the setting will be done through Eclipse.
Once you are done with this last step, you are ready to proceed for your first Spring Example, which you will see in the next chapter.
