What you should know

- [Instructor] In order to be successful, there are a few things you need to know, as well as some software you need installed on your machine. Spring Boot is a JVM framework. While you can use Kotlin, I'm going to stick with Java for this course. Now, I'll be using Spring Boot 3.x, which is based on Spring Framework version 6. As such, it has a minimum baseline of Java 17. If you want to use an older version of Java, this will work with the latest Spring Boot 2.x line. However, the imports will be Java X instead of Jakarta, so keep that in mind. Running Java isn't enough. You must have a JDK installed. I am using Oracle JDK 17, but you can use OpenJDK if you prefer. You'll need some basic language level syntax, but we shouldn't get too deep into the newer features of Java. I will be using Apache Maven as my build system. I suggest having it installed on your machine, as Apache has some great instructions. If you don't want to install it, keep the Maven scripts that come with Spring Boot that I will be deleting and leverage them instead of the built-in Maven that I will be using. Now, a note on this. I'm also going to be using an IDE called IntelliJ Ultimate edition. An IDE is something that is very personal to each developer. You do not need to use the same IDE that I will use. While I will have functions that I will generate code with and create run configurations, all of that behavior can pretty much be done in every IDE, so keep that in mind as we're working through the course. In addition, we're going to be using Node to create a React skeleton. Now, Node needs to be installed on your path. Again, Node.js provides excellent documentation on getting this installed. In this course, I will be using version 19.6.0, which is the latest at the time of creating this course. I also have React installed globally using NPM install -g React. This course is not a deep dive into either React or Spring Boot. As such, there is some prerequisite knowledge that you will have to have. You need a base knowledge of Java, at least the basic syntax of up to Java 14. You need to know Spring Boot. While we will go through much of the details quickly, there will be no in-depth training on this topic. As such, if you need a refresher, check out my course in the LinkedIn Learning Library: Learning Spring with Spring Boot or Spring Boot Essential training. You also need to know the basics of React. Now, Eve Porcello has a great course in the LinkedIn Learning Library on React.js Essential Training that I would highly recommend. Now, I want to set a few expectations for this course. First and foremost, this is not a UI-focused course. I am not a usability expert and don't pretend to be. My focus is teaching you how to wire components between React and Spring Boot based back ends. Styling and performance are a more advanced topic, and I'm not going to even touch it here. To keep this as most succinct as possible, the point of this course is to show you how to wire the React front end to the Spring Boot back end and achieve this in a single build and single package. So let's jump in to Spring Boot with React.