Download:

However, for our first ballerina program, only the runtime environment (bre) is sufficient.

First Main Program

import ballerina.lang.system;

function main(string[] args) {
    system:println("My first ballerina main program!");
}

Now lets save this program as myFirstMainProg.bal.

Run the main Program:

To run our main program, execute the following

<ballerina_home>/bin/ballerina run main <path/to/bal/file>myFirstMainProg.bal

In the console, you would see the below output.

My first ballerina main program!

First Ballerina Service

Now that we have written an executed a main program, it's time to write our first service with ballerina. Lets try to write a simple service that will print the same text as our main program. I will be writing my service to be executed with a http GET request.

import ballerina.lang.system;

import ballerina.net.http;

@http:BasePath{value:"/myService"}
service echoService {

    @http:GET{}
    @http:BasePath{value:"/echo"}

    resource echoResource (message m) {
        system:println("My first ballerina service!");
        reply m;
    }
}

Lets save this service as myFirstService.bal

Run the Service:

To run our service, execute the following:

<ballerina_home>/bin/ballerina run service <path/to/bal/file>myFirstService.bal

In the console, you would see the below output.

ballerina: deploying service(s) in 'passthrough.bal'
ballerina: started server connector http-9090

curl http://localhost:9090/myService/echo

Once the request is sent to our service, following will be printed in the console of the service.

My first ballerina service!

Thus, as you see, despite whether it is a main program or a http service, its pretty easy to write and execute them with ballerina!.