Create a compojure-api project

lein new compojure-api my-api +clojure-test

Deconstruct the project

The project this template creates is relatively simple in terms of dependencies in the project.clj file

  (defproject my-api "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
    :description "Experimenting with the compojure-api"
    :dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.8.0"]
                   [metosin/compojure-api "1.1.11"]]
    :ring {:handler my-api.handler/app}
    :uberjar-name "server.jar"
    :profiles {:dev {:dependencies [[javax.servlet/javax.servlet-api "3.1.0"]
                                   [cheshire "5.5.0"]
                                   [ring/ring-mock "0.3.0"]]
                    :plugins [[lein-ring "0.12.0"]]}})

Interesting things to note are its using the lein-ring plugin, so we should run the application with lein ring server.

When we want to deploy the application then we should use the lein ring uberjar command to create an uberjar (a java archive file that includes our Clojure application and the clojure.core library, so we can just run it as a java library).

:dev profile

In the :dev profile, dependencies include ring/ring-mock library to help us test our server-side web application.

There is also the cheshire library to help us work with JSON data in an efficient way.