Chapter 2. Building and Deploying Your First Application on IBM Bluemix

After having got an understanding of what is Bluemix from the previous chapter, let us now take the plunge. In this chapter, you will learn a few other important aspects of working with IBM Bluemix. You will be introduced to the Cloud Foundry command-line utility, which is a key component to work your way through the Bluemix platform. You will also learn how to use the command-line utility to deploy a hello world application that you will develop using the example in this chapter. This chapter will further discuss on how you can develop a hello world application using the web IDE on the Bluemix platform and how you can deploy changes to the application in an automated fashion using the DevOps services on Bluemix. Sounds exciting? Yes? Let us get started.

In this chapter, we will be looking at following topics:

• Cloud Foundary command line utility

• Log in to Bluemix using cf cli

• Building your first Hello World application and...

Cloud Foundry command line utility

Bluemix is a PaaS platform, which is based on open standards. Bluemix at its core is Cloud Foundry, which is an open source community-based project of open standards-based platform as-a-service offering.

Note

To know more about Cloud Foundry, you can go to https://www.cloudfoundry.org/learn/features/ .

Cloud Foundry command line utility (cf cli) is an interface for the user to interact and work with the Cloud Foundry platform, since Bluemix at its heart is Cloud Foundry, the cf cli can be used to work with the Bluemix platform.

Installing the Cloud Foundry command-line utility

You can step through the following procedure to install the cf cli on your workstation or desktop:

1. Go to https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cli#downloads to download the latest version of cf cli installable for your operating system.

   cf cli installable is available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows operating systems. For updates on versions and support for operating systems, please make...