Initialize JHipster by running the jhipster command in the Terminal, which will produce the following output:
JHipster will ask a number of questions to get input about different options that are required. The first question is about the application type that we want. Here, we are presented with the following options:
- Monolithic application: As the name suggests, it creates a monolithic web application with a Spring Boot-based backend and a SPA frontend.
- Microservice application: This creates a Spring Boot microservice without any frontend and is designed to work with a JHipster microservice architecture.
- Microservice gateway: This creates a Spring Boot application very similar to the monolithic application but geared toward a microservice architecture with additional configurations. It features a SPA frontend.
- JHipster UAA server: This creates an OAuth2 user authentication and authorization service. This will not feature any frontend code and is designed to be used in a JHipster microservice architecture.
- [Alpha] Reactive monolithic application: As the name suggests, it creates a reactive monolithic web application with a Spring Boot-based backend and a SPA frontend. Please note that this is currently an alpha feature.
- [Alpha] Reactive microservice application: This creates a Spring Boot reactive microservice without any frontend and is designed to work with a JHipster microservice architecture. Please note that this is currently an alpha feature.
We will choose the Monolithic application option for our use case. We will discuss microservice options in detail in Chapter 8, Microservice Server-Side Technologies.
Run jhipster --help to see all the available commands. Run jhipster <command> --help to see help information for a specific command; for example, jhipster app --help will display help information for the main app generation process.
In the following sections, we'll learn about server-side options.