Creating a Blogging Platform in Java: Part 1
In the first part of his series on creating a blogging platform in Java, Grzegorz Ziemonski shares his mindset on the genesis of his project and preparation.
It's been some time since I started blogging and I see a lot of room for improvement. I decided to create something open source that will produce real value and act as an example in my posts. Here it comes: Yet another blogging platform!
Overview
I want something as simple as possible. Here are a few key ideas:
- Small amount of code with least dependencies (yes, I know that these two seem contradictory; I'll have to find the right balance).
- Blog contents are stored in Git, preferably in a separate repo than the blog server—people can review my posts and suggest improvements via Pull Requests (they can even propose their own posts!).
- Blog posts are written in markdown or something as easy.
- Modifying the looks is super-simple.
- I have an option to run my blog locally with a live preview.
- RSS feed is generated.
- Comments are available via disqus.
Tools
I'm currently thinking about using the following tools to create the project:
- Java 8. An obvious choice for a Java related blog, though I might experiment a bit with Java 9 later.
- Gradle as a build tool, probably the newest version. I'm not good at it, but I hate pom.xml's, so it's time to learn something else.
- Spock for all kinds of tests. It will give the project some groove.
- IntelliJ IDEA with default formatting settings. It's my favorite IDE and I don't want to bother contributors with stupid rules.
- GitHub repository.
Anything else that joins the toolkit is yet to be decided.
Small Design Upfront
Before I actually start coding anything, I want to share with you my general design idea, that might (or not) be implemented later. I have two possible sources of contents—filesystem or a git repository, used in local and hosted mode respectively. I scan through the contents and generate HTML for each post. Over the content source, I set a "watch," checking for changes regularly (e.g. every second). If a change occurs, it triggers re-generating the post's HTML. For the views, I currently need just an index with headers and a single post view. HTTP routes can be resolved dynamically by adding "/" to index and everything else as a possible post.
I didn't spend a lot of time preparing it. I just wanted to have a clue what I'll be building, but not necessarily a complete picture.
Final Words
You are more than welcome to share your thoughts on the project in comments and contribute on GitHub.
Published at DZone with permission of Grzegorz Ziemoński. See the original article here.
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