Recipe 3.2 Creating a Java Project

3.2.1 Problem

You want to begin programming, so you need to create a new Java project.

3.2.2 Solution

Select File New Project, or right-click the Package Explorer in the Java perspective, and select New Project.

3.2.3 Discussion

All Java code has to go into a project of some kind in Eclipse. Although we covered the basics of creating a new project in Chapter 1, we'll take a more in-depth look at the process here.

To create a Java project, open the New Project dialog by selecting File New Project or by right-clicking the Package Explorer and selecting New Project. Select Java in the left pane and Java Project in the right pane, as shown in Figure 3-2, and click Next.

Figure 3-2. The New Project dialog

Give the project a name in the next dialog, as shown in Figure 3-3, and click Next.

The "Project contents" box shown in Figure 3-3 is where you specify the location of the project. It can be very useful to store the project where other software, such as the Tomcat web server, can find it. To select a custom location for the project, uncheck the "Use default" checkbox, and browse to a new directory.

Figure 3-3. Naming a project

The final dialog in this sequence, shown in Figure 3-4, contains four tabs; here's what they do:

Source

Enables you to specify source folders (discussed shortly)

Projects

Enables you to specify other projects on the build path

Libraries

Enables you to specify JAR files and other folders for the build path

Order and Export

Enables you to specify the build path order and what entries to export

Figure 3-4. Setting project options

These tabs are particularly useful for configuring projects as you create them. For example, say you want to store the source code for your project in a folder named src. To do that, click the Source tab, click Add Folder, click Create New Folder, type the letters src, and then click OK twice. Eclipse will ask you if you want to use this new folder as your source folder instead of the default project folder, and whether you want to use an output build folder named bin, as shown in Figure 3-5. Click Yes if you want to set up the src folder to your project's source code and if you want the bin folder to hold the compiled output.

Figure 3-5. Creating an output folder

3.2.4 See Also

Chapter 2 of Eclipse (O'Reilly).