Tutorial: Build a Full-stack Reactive Chat App With Spring Boot

What You Will Build

You will build a full-stack chat application with a Java Spring Boot back end, reactive data types from Project Reactor, and a Lit TypeScript front end. In addition, you will use the Hilla framework to build tools and client-server communication

What You Will Need

  • 20 minutes
  • Java 11 or newer
  • Node 16.14 or newer
  • An IDE that supports both Java and TypeScript, such as VS Code

Video Version

The video below walks you through this tutorial step-by-step, if you prefer to learn by watching. 

From Zero to Kubernetes: The Fast Track

Historically, enterprise Java development was known (and feared) for its steep learning curve. It was necessary to use dozens of lines of XML code just to deploy a simple application or to configure application servers. With the rise of DevOps, this hassle is merely the beginning of a long and painful process — the developer (or DevOps engineer, if you wish) is not only responsible for configuration but also for running the application. This has historically required either the creation of curator scripts that ensure that the application is running (and restarts it, in case it is not running), or manual intervention in case of application failure.

Modern Trends to The Rescue

Fortunately for us, the times of laborious configuration are over. Now it is possible to utilize tools which automate most tasks that were previously time-intensive or which required active monitoring. In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to create a simple application in Java (Spring Boot) and how to containerize it and deploy it in a Kubernetes cluster. Our application, even though simple in functionality, will have resiliency built-in and will recover automatically in the event of failure. Based on the example provided today, the whole application can easily be created and deployed into a testing cluster in under 30 minutes, without much configuration.