No, honestly... I never thought it would be that simple!
Bluemix is currently in open beta. You need to register to get started.
To register go to: https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/
The free trial version is available for 30 days.
Once you have logged in, you will see a nice dashboard.
Just explore around to your heart's content when you have time, the DOCS are exhaustive, yet very useful.
Quick steps for your first app:
- Click on Create an App; you will be presented with the Catalog, with Boilerplates* and Runtimes.
- Let's start with 'Liberty for Java'.
- Give it a name.
- P.S. myTestApp will most likely be taken! Chose a better one ;)
- Give it a few minutes and you will see the 'health' of your app turn green.
- Click on the app and click on VIEW QUICK START.
- Now go to myTestApp.bluemix.net and Voila! That's your very first app there.
- Ok. It has some code written for you already. Just as an example. So let's just continue to add our bit to this app.
- Blindly follow the steps given there UNTIL STEP #3.
- Extract the zip file and add a simple HTML file of your own in WebContent folder. Let me just add this simple HTML file that takes a word and says 'Hello'.
- Generate a war file. You can use eclipse or run 'ant build-war' from command prompt.
- Now the following simple commands in your terminal:
- cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net
- cf login -u <user-name>
- Give your password
- cd to your project path where the war file resides
- cf push <app-name> -p <war file name>
- On bluemix dashboard, you can see the health of the app turning red for a while and then back to green. That means your app is running now!
- Congratulations! That took about 2 minutes and that is how is easy it is!
- http://pd-javaapp1.mybluemix.net/SayHello.html here is my app for you all to test!
Try it out and let me know the results and questions if you have any! :)
*Boilerplates: Just a fancy word for 'getting started applications'.
Here is a youtube link that shows how to add a servlet. Thank you Ryan Baxter!

