IntelliJ IDEA 2024.1 Help

Micronaut

Micronaut is a modern Java framework for writing microservice and serverless applications. IntelliJ IDEA provides the following:

  • Coding assistance specific to the Micronaut API and the configuration file parameters. For example, when writing query methods, generating HTTP requests for defined endpoints, and so on.

  • Integration with the Beans and Endpoints tool windows.

  • A dedicated project creation wizard based on launch.micronaut.io.

  • A dedicated run configuration for Micronaut applications.

Create a new Micronaut project

  1. Launch IntelliJ IDEA.

    If the Welcome screen opens, click New Project.

    Otherwise, go to File | New | Project in the main menu.

  2. Select Micronaut from the left pane.

    • Click the Configure icon to enter the URL of the service that you want to use, or leave the default one.

    • Specify a name and location for your project and configure project metadata: select a language, a build tool, and specify an artifact ID.

    • From the JDK list, select the JDK that you want to use in your project.

      If the JDK is installed on your computer, but not defined in the IDE, select Add JDK and specify the path to the JDK home directory.

      If you don't have the necessary JDK on your computer, select Download JDK.

      If you want to build your project on a Java version different from your project JDK version, you can select it here.

    New Micronaut project wizard

    Click Next.

  3. On the next step of the wizard, from the Features list, select the necessary options and click Create.

The generated project contains only the main Application class and everything necessary to run the application. IntelliJ IDEA recognizes it and adds the Run icon to the gutter, which you can click to run the application.

The default Micronaut application main class

However, an empty project is boring. Let's make the application return Hello World! in response to an HTTP GET request.

Add a Micronaut HTTP controller

  1. Right-click the directory with the main class (be default, it is src/main/java/com/example) and select New | Java Class.

  2. Type the name of the class HelloController and press Enter.

  3. Copy the following code into the created file:

    package com.example; import io.micronaut.http.MediaType; import io.micronaut.http.annotation.Controller; import io.micronaut.http.annotation.Get; import io.micronaut.http.annotation.Produces; @Controller("/hello") public class HelloController { @Get(produces = MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN) public String sayHello() { return "Hello World!"; } }

    • The @Controller annotation defines the class as an HTTP controller mapped to the /hello endpoint.

    • The @Get annotation maps all HTTP GET requests for this endpoint to the sayHello() method and sets the Content-Type of the response to text/plain.

    • The sayHello() method returns the string Hello World!.

IntelliJ IDEA recognizes the HTTP controller and marks it with The HTTP Controller icon in the gutter. You can also click The Open in HTTP Client icon to generate an HTTP request for the endpoint and open it in a separate HTTP client editor tab. IntelliJ IDEA provides other gutter icons, for example:

  • The Navigate to event listeners icon Navigate to event listeners

  • The Navigate to event publisher icon Navigate to event publisher

  • The Navigate to the autowired dependencies icon Navigate to the autowired dependencies

To see all the endpoints defined in your application, open the Endpoints tool window. For example, here is the /hello endpoint:

The Endpoints tool window with the sample /hello endpoint

Run the Micronaut application

IntelliJ IDEA creates a Micronaut run configuration that executes the necessary Maven goal or Gradle task.

  • Select the Micronaut run configuration in the main toolbar and click the Run button or press Shift+F10.

    Alternatively, you can press Alt+Shift+F10 and select the necessary run configuration.

    If successful, you should see the output log in the Run tool window.

    Micronaut application running in the Run tool window

By default, the application starts on http://localhost:8080. Open this address in a web browser, and you will see the standard error response because the application root doesn't handle GET requests:

{"message":"Page Not Found","_links":{"self":{"href":"/","templated":false}}}

However, the application has an HTTP controller that responds to GET requests. If you open the http://localhost:8080/hello endpoint, the application will respond with Hello World!.

Quickly create connection to a database

Using the Database Tools and SQL plugin, IntelliJ IDEA lets you create and manage connections to databases.

In a Micronaut project, you can instantly create it from your application properties file.

  1. Open an application.properties or application.yml file. If it contains datasource-related properties (for example, mongodb.uri or redis.host) , the datasource icon Datasource icon will be displayed in the gutter.

  2. Click Datasource icon. This will open the data source creation form with some of the parameters (such as URL, username, or database name) populated based on data from your configuration file.

    If the data source is already configured, the datasource icon is displayed instead. Click it to open the datasource in the Database tool window.

    Create data source window

Below is the list of databases for which this action is available:

  • Amazon Redshift

  • Apache Cassandra

  • Apache Derby

  • Couchbase

  • H2

  • HSQLDB

  • IBM Db2

  • MariaDB

  • Microsoft SQL Server

  • MongoDB

  • MySQL

  • Oracle Database

  • PostgreSQL

  • Redis

  • SQLite

  • Sybase

For more details on data source parameters, refer to Data sources.

Last modified: 14 March 2024
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