Planning out our project

[alanpjohn]

Additional technologies and methods to use

Hi Guys!!

This thread is for general project planning, these are additional technologies and methods that we can/will use. You can read more about each option below and give your opinions about them. Once we decide what we want to do. I'll edit the discussion to show our choices on the checklist so that we are all on the same page on what has been accepted and what has been rejected.

We can also have a call about this if you are more comfortable that way

• Test files

• Using Maven

• Documentation verification using javadoc

• Github actions

• OpenAPI.json for specifications

• Frameworks like React, Angular, Next etc

  if yes, which one?

• Bootstrap and powerful css tools

  if yes, which one?

Test Files

We can use JUnit for unit testing for our application.

• Read more about JUnit here
• JUnit best practices

So for each class we can write tests that will test the functionality of that class, to see if it meets our requirements.

If our code is at src/main/java then our tests are at src/test/java with the exact same package structure.

Benefits	Drawbacks
If someone alters the code of the class to add some more features, having tests make sure that any changes to code doesnt change the expected behaviour of other features.	More code will have to written each time to ensure that whatever code we write is tested to keep good code coverage

Using Maven

Maven is a build automation tool used primarily for Java projects. Maven can also be used to build and manage projects written in C#, Ruby, Scala, and other languages.

How to set up a J2EE application on Eclipse with Maven - check this out

To those who have used JavaScript, it's like npm

Benefits	Drawbacks
More support for J2EE projects that use maven compared to java projects that don't use maven. Makes using third party tools much easier	There's a learning curve to it

Documentation using JavaDoc

Javadoc allows to create machine readable comments which can be checked using java doclint. Read more here.

Javadoc conventions can be decided by us and kept minimal or in-depth depending from the team.

Codacy is a third party application that we can use to do checks on all kinds of code classes with respect to industry standards.

Benefits	Drawbacks
Readable and understandable code using uniform standardized comments	No major ones, except maybe a little more time will have to utilized for good comments. Javadoc might not be able to lint non-java files.

Codacy is a third party application that we can use to do checks on all kinds of code classes with respect to industry standards.

Github actions

Github actions is a serveless CI that is provided by github for free. We can use that to automate processes such as unit testing, building, linting and deployments automatically. It can do cross platform, cross JDK checks as well.

Benefits	Drawbacks
Automates a lot of stuff for us	None

OpenAPI.json

Is the de facto standard for describing REST APIs. Previously called as Swagger.

There are many tutorials and blogs on how to use OpenAPI specifications with J2EE. If setup properly, it can help document our application services a lot better.

Benefits	Drawbacks
Clear API documentation for better understanding of services	Lack of familiarity of using this specification with J2EE might make it a little complicated at start

Frameworks like React, Angular, Next

We can use something popular likeReact or something more suitable for static web applications like Next based on our use case. I have seen instances where J2EE is used with React,Angular but it uses java servelets as a standalone backend API. So we'll have to look into JSP intergrations with frameworks like React,Angular, Next

Benefits	Drawbacks
A more structured frontend	Doubts over compatibility and complexity of setup.

Bootstrap and powerful css tools

There are a lot of CSS based tools to help make better UI/UX. Some would include Bootstrap, Bootswatch, Tailwind.css etc

Benefits	Drawbacks
Better frontend with less work required	None

[ShubhraBhuniaGhosh]

heart attack

[pavleen14]

• In my preference, we could go for using Maven. It would actually help a lot and we can easily avoid the version issues.
• Document verification using java docs : Definitely we should go for it.
• GitHub actions: I have not worked with it that much but if I have to then I will because it can help us in various ways.
• Frameworks: All the 3 that have been mentioned are entirely new for me. So I would suggest going for Angular, because it will be covered in training and in that way I could learn & implement it.

[alanpjohn]

Github actions will be set by me as I am maintaining the repo so no one else will have to interact with them as such. It will be automated checks so no has to interact with them as such.

GitHub actions: I have not worked with it that much but if I have to then I will because it can help us in various ways.

[pavleen14]

Perfect then. I think these are the same automated checks, which we discussed in the meeting, right?

[alanpjohn]

Yes exactly
If you want, you can check this video out to know more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8_veQiYBjI
and if you are interested, you can contribute to set them as well :)

[pavleen14]

Sure, I will check it out and we can discuss about it.!

[rishikeshshede]

Yes exactly
If you want, you can check this video out to know more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8_veQiYBjI
and if you are interested, you can contribute to set them as well :)

I'd also love to check out how it's done.