#Ballerina Tools Distribution

Ballerina Tools distribution contains a complete development kit required for developing using the ballerina language.

This contains

• Ballerina Runtime (https://github.com/ballerinalang/ballerina)
• Ballerina Composer (https://github.com/ballerinalang/composer)
• Testerina (https://github.com/ballerinalang/testerina)
• Docerina (https://github.com/ballerinalang/docerina)
  Docerina uses HTML5 UP templates for documents (https://html5up.net/)
• Container Support (https://github.com/ballerinalang/container-support)
• Connectors (https://github.com/ballerinalang/connectors)

Getting started

You can download the Ballerina Tools distribution, try samples, and read the documentation at http://ballerinalang.org.

Building from the source

If you want to build Ballerina Tools from the source code:

1. Get a clone or download the source from this repository (https://github.com/ballerinalang/distribution).
2. Run the Maven command mvn clean install from the root directory.
3. Extract the Ballerina Tools distribution created at target/ballerina-tools-0.8.0.zip to your local directory.

Running samples

The website http://ballerinalang.org has several samples you can try out right there in the page. These samples are also available in the <ballerina_tools_home>/samples directory in your Ballerina distribution.

Run HelloWorld

This sample will show you how easy it is to run Ballerina, send it a request, and get a response. The HelloWorld sample doesn't take any specific input, so simply running it will cause it to print "Hello, World!" at the command line.

At the command prompt, navigate to the <ballerina_tools_home>/bin directory and enter the following line:

ballerina run main helloworld.bal You will see the following response:

Hello, World! You just started Ballerina, ran the HelloWorld sample, and got a response within seconds. Let's take a look at what the sample looks like in the Ballerina programming language:

function main (string[] args) {
  system:println("Hello, World!");
}

Pretty simple and straightforward, right? Now, let's look at something a little more interesting: the Composer.

Run the Composer

In the bin directory, type sh composer at the command prompt (omit sh if you are running on Windows). Access the Composer from the following URL in your browser: http://localhost:9091

The welcome page of Ballerina Composer appears. Let's open a sample and take a look around. Click echoService. Notice that on the left you have a tool palette containing the various constructs that you'll use to build your integration. On the right, you have a visual editor with a canvas onto which you drag those constructs. This is where you build your sequence diagrams that define your integration logic.

Also notice in the lower right corner the Source View and Swagger View buttons.

• Click Source View. You'll see the source code editor that represents the sequence diagram as code in the Ballerina language. You can go back and forth between the visual editor and the source code and make your edits in either place.
• Click Swagger View. This editor allows you to write Swagger definitions to create services.
• Click Design View to return to the visual editor.