Develop cloud-native Java applications directly in OpenShift with Open Liberty and odo

Adam Wisniewski on Jan 20, 2021

kubernetes , developer-experience , openshift ,

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True-to-production development is critical when you create cloud-native applications, and what better way to develop those applications than directly in the cloud! The Open Liberty devfile stack allows you to do just that by providing a simple yet robust Open Liberty development experience directly in a Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster. The devfile stack does the heavy lifting by allowing you to focus on your code as if it were running right on your laptop.

Check out a quick demo:

OpenShift Do

OpenShift Do (odo) is the mechanism that’s used to drive the Open Liberty stack. It’s a straightforward CLI tool that you can use to create stack projects and interact directly with a Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster. Unlike kubectl and oc, odo abstracts away the complexity of the underlying infrastructure and helps developers focus on their applications.

Try it out

After you install odo, you can use the Open Liberty stack to either create a new Open Liberty starter application or initialize an existing application as a stack project. In this blog post, we’ll use the devfile-stack-intro project as a starting point:

$ git clone -b blog-demo [email protected]:OpenLiberty/devfile-stack-intro.git && \
  cd devfile-stack-intro

This application is a basic JAX-RS sample that uses Maven, Open Liberty, and MicroProfile.

$ odo create java-openliberty my-ol-component

You will notice that a devfile.yaml file has been downloaded in the project root from the default devfile registry. This devfile is the brains behind the Open Liberty stack and outlines how the application is built, run, and deployed using the stack’s development image.

The devfile-stack-intro application is now initialized with odo and ready to deploy:

$ odo push

Just like that, the application is pushed to your cluster. There’s no need to build an image, create a deployment, or run any custom commands. The stack and odo do everything behind the scenes. You can check the output to make sure that your application is up and ready for use:

$ odo log

To access the application, the Open Liberty stack creates a default URL for your deployment named ep1. You can find that URL in the URL list:

$ odo url list

Found the following URLs for component my-ol-component
NAME     STATE      URL                                                                     PORT     SECURE     KIND
ep1      Pushed     http://ep1-my-ol-component-my-project.apps.awisniew.cp.fyre.ibm.com     9080     false      route

Open a browser to this URL and append /api/resource to the end of the URL for the REST endpoint, for example, http://ep1-my-ol-component-my-project.apps.awisniew.cp.fyre.ibm.com/api/resource. You should see the following screen:

If you’re deploying to generic Kubernetes, you might need to create a URL by using a configured Ingress domain, for example, odo url create --host <my-ingress-domain>, and then push your changes again.

Start coding!

Not only is the application running in OpenShift, it is also running in dev mode so it’s ready to pick up any changes that you make. Each time you make a change, you can either re-issue the odo push command to sync your local changes with your remote cluster, or odo can watch for changes automatically:

$ odo watch

Now, let’s make a change to the REST API. Open src/main/java/dev/odo/sample/StarterResource and change the getRequest() String response to "Open Liberty is awesome!"

Refresh your browser. The application that’s running in OpenShift is automatically updated!

Learn more

To learn more about odo, go to https://odo.dev. For more details about the Open Liberty stack, go to https://github.com/OpenLiberty/devfile-stack.

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