### Hello World Tutorial

With this tutorial you will learn how to create your first Scout application.

#### Create a Scout Project

Start your Eclipse IDE and select an empty directory for your workspace as shown in Figure 1. This workspace directory will then hold all the project code for the `Hello Scout` application. Once the Eclipse IDE is running it will show the Java perspective.

Figure 1. Select a new empty folder to hold your project workspace

To create a new Scout project select the menu File New Project…​ and type `Scout Project` in the wizard search field. Select the Scout Project wizard and press Next. The New Scout Project wizard is then started as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The new Scout project wizard.

In the New Scout Project wizard you have to enter a `Group Id`, `Artifact Id` and a `Display Name` for your Scout project. As the created project will make use of Apache Maven please refer to the Maven naming conventions to choose `Group Id` and `Artifact Id` for your project. The `Display Name` is used as the application name presented to the user (e.g. in the browser title bar).

For the `Hello Scout` application just use the already pre-filled values and ensure the user interface programming language is set to `Java` as sown in Figure 2. Then click the Finish button to let the Scout SDK create the initial project code for you.

Depending on your Eclipse installation some `Maven plugin connectors` may initially be missing. In that case a dialog as shown in Figure 3 may be shown. To continue click on Finish to resolve the selected connectors. Afterwards confirm the installation, accept the license and the message that some content has not been signed. Finally, the installation of the maven plugin connectors requires a restart of the Eclipse IDE.

Figure 3. The Maven plugin connector installation dialog.

After the New Scout Project wizard has created the Maven modules for the `Hello Scout` application the code is compiled by the Eclipse IDE. You can see the created Maven modules in the `Package Explorer` as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The initial set of Maven modules created for the Hello Scout application.

After the compilation, you can start the Scout application for the first time. Since the `Hello Scout` app consists of a backend and a frontend, two servers need to be started. Before the frontend server can deliver any JavaScript code to the browser the JavaScript build needs to be executed as well. You could start each launch configuration separately, but for the sake of convenience there is a launch group available which starts all at once.

To start the launch group use the Run As menu as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Starting the Hello Scout application.

| The JavaScript build could fail in case the installed Node.js could not be found or is too old. In that case follow the instructions in the section [Prerequisites].

Once the JS build has been completed successfully, the frontend and backend servers will be started automatically. The servers are ready as soon as the console shows `Server ready`. You can now access the `Hello Scout` application by navigating to http://localhost:8082/ in your favorite web browser.

The `Hello Scout` application is then presented as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. The Hello Scout application in the browser.

#### What’s Next?

In the next tutorial, you will learn how to import the Scout demo applications into your workspace.

Do you want to improve this document? Have a look at the sources on GitHub.