Recipe 1.5 Creating a Java Project

1.5.1 Problem

You want to start programming some Java. Where do you start?

1.5.2 Solution

Select File New Project.

1.5.3 Discussion

In Eclipse, all code—Java or otherwise—has to go into a project, and creating Eclipse projects is a basic skill. Projects organize your files, classes, libraries, and exports. Over the next few recipes, we're going to create a Java project that will use the code you see in Example 1-1 to display some simple text, "Stay cool."

Creating a Java project is a basic skill, and this chapter is all about basic skills. However, there's much more that we don't have space for here. For additional details on creating Java projects, see Chapter 3 and Chapter 4.

Example 1-1. The FirstApp.java example

public class FirstApp
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    System.out.println("Stay cool.");
  }
}

To get started, create a new Java project by selecting File New Project in Eclipse, and then open the New Project dialog, shown in Figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5. The New Project dialog

We want to create a Java project, so select Java in the left pane and Java Project in the right pane. Click Next, and in the next dialog name the project FirstApp, as shown in Figure 1-6.

Figure 1-6. Naming a project

Click Finish to finish creating the project. (If you click Next, additional options for creating projects appear in the dialog that opens, but this chapter deals with basic Eclipse skills; you can learn more about project creation options in Chapter 3.)

If you've opened Eclipse for the first time and/or the Resource perspective is the only perspective open, Eclipse will ask you if you want to switch to the Java perspective, as shown in Figure 1-7. Click Yes.

Figure 1-7. Switching perspectives

After this new project, FirstApp, is created, it's opened in the Java perspective. We've already discussed perspectives informally, but now that we're about to work with them directly we'll take a more in-depth look in the next two recipes. We'll continue developing the code for this example in the recipes that follow.

1.5.4 See Also

Recipe 1.8 on creating a Java class; Chapter 1 of Eclipse (O'Reilly).