Book Image

Modular Programming in Java 9

By : Koushik Srinivas Kothagal
Book Image

Modular Programming in Java 9

By: Koushik Srinivas Kothagal

Overview of this book

The Java 9 module system is an important addition to the language that affects the way we design, write, and organize code and libraries in Java. It provides a new way to achieve maintainable code by the encapsulation of Java types, as well as a way to write better libraries that have clear interfaces. Effectively using the module system requires an understanding of how modules work and what the best practices of creating modules are. This book will give you step-by-step instructions to create new modules as well as migrate code from earlier versions of Java to the Java 9 module system. You'll be working on a fully modular sample application and add features to it as you learn about Java modules. You'll learn how to create module definitions, setup inter-module dependencies, and use the built-in modules from the modular JDK. You will also learn about module resolution and how to use jlink to generate custom runtime images. We will end our journey by taking a look at the road ahead. You will learn some powerful best practices that will help you as you start building modular applications. You will also learn how to upgrade an existing Java 8 codebase to Java 9, handle issues with libraries, and how to test Java 9 applications.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Chapter 2. Creating Your First Java Module

In the previous chapter, we took a detailed look at the problems associated with modularizing Java code pre-Java 9, as well as the new module construct in Java 9 and Project Jigsaw. Before we examine how Java modularity solves these problems, you'll need to first understand what a Java module looks like. In this chapter, you'll create your first Java 9 module and learn what it takes to build and execute code in a Java module. Here are the top-level topics you'll be learning in this chapter:

  • Setting up the JDK with Java 9
  • Creating a new Java 9 module
  • Defining a module (using module-info.java)
  • Compiling and executing a module
  • Handling possible errors

You'll be building a sample Java 9 application throughout this book as you learn the different concepts related to modularity. The application you'll build is an address book viewer application that displays some contacts sorted by last name. We'll start simple and enhance this application as we go. When you...