Working With Eclipse and Glassfish

With the new launch of Java EE 7, I felt the quickest way to get a taste of it is to use Glassfish (Java EE reference implementation). Here’s how to get started with Glassfish and Eclipse:

Eclipse GlassFish Setup

  1. Download and install JDK 7 if you haven’t done so.
    jdk download



  2. Ensure you have Eclipse installed. First we’ll add Glassfish runtime environment. On Eclipse, go to Preferences -> Server -> Runtime Environments -> Add and select Glassfish -> Glassfish 4.0 (Select Download additional server adapter if you can’t find it).

    eclipse glassfish 01

    Hit Next, select Java 7 runtime and glassfish directory (On windows this is normally C:glassfish4glassfish)

    glassfish eclipse setup 1

  3. Next, create a new Glassfish server. Ctrl+N (or Cmd+N on Mac) and select Server -> Server. Select server type GlassFish -> GlassFish 4.0. Accept all defaults and hit Finish. You should now have a Glassfish server on your Servers tab on eclipse:

    eclipse glassfish 2

  4. To test your server, select the Glassfish 4.0 Server from Eclipse server tab and right click -> Start. Glassfish server will output few messages to the console, and you can verify by opening http://localhost:8080 on your browser, you will see something like this:

    glassfish server running

    Right click the server -> Stop to stop the server.

Create New Glassfish Application Project

Now we have eclipse wired to Glassfish, we can begin coding the application.

  1. Create a new dynamic web project: Ctrl+N (or Cmd+N on Mac) -> Select Web -> Dynamic web project. Configure it like following:
    Screen Shot 2013-06-29 at 2.46.42 PM

    Accept all default (or configure if you need to) and hit Finish