We will download, install and configure gradle, and then execute a simple program.

Prerequisites

1. Gradle 1.x requires a Java JDK 5 or higher to be installed and the location needs to be added to an environment variable JAVA_HOME. 

2. Gradle 2.x requires a Java JDK 6 or higher to be installed and the location needs to be added to an environment variable JAVA_HOME. 

Gradle is a project automation tool designed for large multi-project builds that builds upon the concepts of Ant and Maven, and introduces a Groovy-based domain-specific language (DSL) instead of traditional XML form of declaring the project configuration.

WebSocket is a TCP-based protocol like HTTP which is part of HTML 5 specification. Unlike HTTP which is a request response synchronous protocol, WebSocket provides a two way (full-duplex) communications channel over a single TCP connection and messages (textual and binary) can be sent between client and server asynchronously without the overhead of HTTP request/response life cycle.

We will write a simple JavaFX application that displays a “Hello World” button. We will handle any button click events to print “Hello World” in the console. The program can be run from command line or from an IDE like eclipse, but without the Eclipse Plugin for JavaFX and Scene builder.