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I'm quite interested in exploring JHipster in depth since I like the idea of having a framework for generating a spring-microservice backend with modern react/angular. HOWEVER, I'm put off by the fact that JHipster uses its own language 'JDL' -- I don't want to be tied to the-JHipster ecosystem per se, I just want quality boilerplates to work from. What exactly is JDL? Can it be ignored/removed, or does using JHipster mean that you're sucked into learning yet more niche technologies that may or may not survive the test of time?

Mohsen
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Anastasius Vivaldus
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    To generate a project and entities, you don't need to touch or see JDL. You can answer the prompts manually. More info at the top of the docs https://www.jhipster.tech/jdl/ – Jon Ruddell Nov 11 '18 at 00:15
  • So is JDL only used at project creation? Or can one update a project by e.g. editing one's jdl config and then e.g. running some jhipster-update command? – Anastasius Vivaldus Nov 19 '18 at 16:58
  • It's only used to generate the entities (and optionally the app itself too). Then when you want to change an entity, you can update the JDL and re-import it. It only generates files for changed entities. If you used prompts to generate entities, you can export it into JDL with `jhipster export-jdl` as well – Jon Ruddell Nov 19 '18 at 18:53

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I don't see the point of not using JDL (JHipster Domain Language) as it saves you a lot of time and it is very easy to learn. Having said that, you can only answer the jhipster generator questions and it will create the application JDL for you. Also you don't forcibly need to later generate entities using JDL, you can manually do your own code - which would be more time consuming. There is also an online JDL editor that could help https://start.jhipster.tech/jdl-studio/ .

dori
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  • I just cant stand the thought of having to learn *yet another* language. However, from what I gather, it's not what I'd call a language, rather, it's seems to be just conventions for a configuration file for setting up your hipster project. – Anastasius Vivaldus Nov 20 '18 at 16:20