Hilla

The modern web framework for Java

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Hilla integrates a Spring Boot Java backend with a reactive TypeScript front end. It helps you build apps faster with type-safe server communication, included UI components, and integrated tooling.

Simple type-safe server communication

Hilla helps you access the backend easily with type-safe endpoints.

index.ts

// Type info is automatically generated based on Java
import Person from 'Frontend/generated/com/vaadin/hilla/demo/entity/Person';
import { PersonService } from 'Frontend/generated/endpoints';

async function getPeopleWithPhoneNumber() {
  const people: Person[] = await PersonService.findAll();

  // Compile error: The property is 'phone', not 'phoneNumber'
  return people.filter((person) => !!person.phoneNumber);
}

console.log('People with phone numbers: ', getPeopleWithPhoneNumber());

PersonService.java

@BrowserCallable
@AnonymousAllowed
public class PersonService {

    private PersonRepository repository;

    public PersonService(PersonRepository repository) {
        this.repository = repository;
    }

    public @Nonnull List<@Nonnull Person> findAll() {
        return repository.findAll();
    }
}

Person.java

@Entity
public class Person {

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue
    private Integer id;

    @Nonnull private String firstName;
    @Nonnull private String lastName;
    @Email @Nonnull private String email;
    @Nonnull private String phone;

    // getters, setters
}

Learn more at vaadin.com/hilla

Get started

Follow the tutorials at https://vaadin.com/docs/latest/getting-started

Contributing

The best way to contribute is to try out Hilla and provide feedback to the development team in our Forum or with GitHub issues. Those marked with the good first issue label are a good starting point.

Development

If you want to develop Hilla, you can clone the repo and run tests using the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/vaadin/hilla.git
npm install
npm run build
mvn clean formatter:format install -DskipTests
npm test
mvn verify -Pproduction

You need the following versions of SDKs and tools:

• Node.js: >= 22 LTS,
• npm: >=10 (package-lock.json is of version 3)
• JDK: >=17
• Maven: >=3

Testing changes locally

Java modules are located in ./packages/java. If you make changes to Java code and want to test them in a real application, you can set the Vaadin version to SNAPSHOT in the pom.xml of your application. This requires using the Vaadin pre-release repositories. Make sure to add the following to your pom.xml:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>vaadin-prereleases</id>
        <url>https://maven.vaadin.com/vaadin-prereleases</url>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </snapshots>
    </repository>
    <repository>
        <id>Vaadin Directory</id>
        <url>https://maven.vaadin.com/vaadin-addons</url>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
        </snapshots>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<pluginRepositories>
    <pluginRepository>
        <id>vaadin-prereleases</id>
        <url>https://maven.vaadin.com/vaadin-prereleases</url>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </snapshots>
    </pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>

TypeScript modules are located in ./packages/ts. If you make changes to the TypeScript code, you can package your changes locally by running the following command in the modified package:

npm run build && npm pack

It will create a .tgz file in the package root. Then, in your application, you can install that package using the following command:

npm install <path-to-tgz>

Remember to delete the line that points to the package in package.json when you are done testing. The next run will add back the corresponding default package.

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