Create a Project

When creating a new Aion project, developers can use Maven's built in project creation commands to download the latest version of the Aion archetype, and begin development with a fresh bolierplate template.

To create a new Maven project, run the following command in the directory where you want your code to be stored:

mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.aion4j -DarchetypeArtifactId=avm-archetype -DarchetypeVersion=LATEST
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The code snippet above uses the LATEST tag for the archetype version. This will download and use the latest archetype version available on the Apache Maven repository. You can also find the latest archetype version on the Maven CLI Aion4j plugin repository.

Archetype Version Screenshot

GroupId, ArtifactId, Version, and Package

The archetype generator will ask you for a groupId, artifactid, version, and package. You can put whatever you want in these fields, but it will help you further down the line if you follow these guidelines.

Type Description Example
groupId Uniquely identifies your project across all projects. Must follow Apache’s reverse domain naming control convention. org.apache.maven, org.example.commons
artifactId The name of the .jar file without version. commons-math, hello-world
version Which version of the project you’re building. You can choose any typical version with numbers and dots. 0.0.1, 19.5, 5.1.3-NIGHTLY
package Apache is very specific about what to use here. However for the purposes of this HelloWorld project, the package name doesn’t really matter. HelloWorld, gov.whitehouse.socks.mousefinder, edu.cmu.cs.bovik.cheese

Here’s an example:

Confirm properties configuration:
    groupId: com.helloworld
    artifactId: hello-world
    version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
    package: com.helloworld
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Project Structure

Once you’ve ran the archetype command and filled in the fields, you will have a file structure similar to this:

hello-world/
├── pom.xml
└── src
    ├── main
    │   └── java
    │       └── com
    │           └── helloworld
    │               └── HelloAvm.java
    └── test
        └── java
            └── com
                └── helloworld
                    └── HelloAvmRuleTest.java
Text

Initialize

You can launch the Maven initializer to finalize the folder structure of your project, and create the avm.jar that will run your localized blockchain. Make sure you’ve moved into the same directory as your pom.xml file first.

cd hello-world
mvn initialize

> [INFO] Scanning for projects...

...

[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  0.476 s

...
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That’s it! Your project has been initialized and everything is ready for you to start developing your Java dApp.