getting-started.md

Getting Started

The Starter Code has four folders: dataAccess, passoff, resources, and server. Complete the following steps to move the starter code into your project for this phase.

1. Open your chess project directory.

2. Copy the starter-code/3-web-api/server/Server.java file into the server/src/main/java/server folder. This contains a basic implementation of an HTTP server that allows the pass-off tests to programmatically start and stop your server, as well as the code to host a web browser interface for experimenting with your endpoints.

3. Copy the starter-code/3-web-api/dataaccess folder into the server/src/main/java folder. This contains an exception class that you will throw whenever there is a data access error.

4. Create the folder server/src/test/java. Right-click on the folder and select the option to mark the directory as Test sources root. This tells IntelliJ where to look for code to run as tests.

   

5. Copy the starter-code/3-web-api/passoff folder into the server/src/test/java folder. The passoff/server folder contains the server test cases.

6. Create the folder server/src/main/resources. Right-click on the folder and select the option to mark the directory as Resources root. This tells IntelliJ that it should include the directory when compiling the code to your out directory.

7. Copy the starter-code/3-web-api/resources/web folder to the server/src/main/resources folder. The web folder contains the files that implement the web browser interface for experimenting with your endpoints.

This should result in the following structure:

└── server
    └── src
        ├── main
        │   ├── java
        │   │   ├── server
        │   │   │   ├── Server.java
        │   │   │   └── ServerMain.java
        │   │   └── dataaccess
        │   │       └── DataAccessException.java
        │   └── resources
        │       └── web
        │           ├── favicon.ico
        │           ├── index.css
        │           ├── index.html
        │           └── index.js
        └── test
            └── java
                └── passoff
                    └── server
                        └── StandardAPITests.java

Getting the Webpage for Testing Setup

Once you have completed all of the previous steps, you should be able to launch your server and access a testing HTML page. This is a simple frontend that was made to help with basic testing of your server endpoints.

Inside of server/src/main/java/server/ServerMain.java in the main method, replace the code that is there with the creation of the Server object. Then call the server's run method. The run method needs the port you will run your server on, which is typically 8080 for testing.

package server;

public class ServerMain {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Server server = new Server();
        server.run(8080);

        System.out.println("♕ 240 Chess Server");
    }
}

When you run the main method, it will start the server. Intelij will display several informational lines of red text in the Run window, but if no errors are reported, you should be fine.

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080 (If you picked another port, replace 8080 with that instead). If everything is set up correctly, you should be able to see this webpage.

You can use this to test your endpoints as you are coding the project.

If you want to see how this works in greater depth or need help troubleshooting, take a look at this page.