This is part of the article Unified Gaming: Tic-Tac-Toe on Android with Spring Boot
In modern application development, the key aspect is choosing the right tools and technologies that will not only provide flexibility and scalability of the project, but also allow you to create the most efficient and interoperable application across different platforms. In this article, I would like to share my experience in developing a multiplayer Tic-tac-toe game implemented using Spring Boot for the server side and Android for the client side.
Selection of technologies and project architecture.
For the server side, Spring Boot was chosen due to its powerful capabilities for creating modular, fast-growing and easily testable applications. Spring Boot provides a wide range of initial dependencies that simplify development and allows you to focus on business logic while minimizing configuration tediousness.
Using Spring Data JPA makes it easier to interact with a database, in our case MySQL, by providing a simple and powerful way to work with data in an object-oriented style. For real-time messaging between the client and the server, WebSocket is chosen, which is implemented in Spring Boot with minimal effort thanks to the spring-boot-starter-websocket starter.
On the client side, the choice fell on Android, here I don’t think it’s worth explaining anything =D. The Gson library is used to serialize and deserialize data from JSON. To connect to the server via WebSocket and use the STOMP protocol, the Krossbow library was chosen, which allows you to establish a reliable and efficient two-way connection.
Architectural solutions
The architecture is based on a client-server model, where the server handles game logic, state storage, and synchronization between players, and clients are responsible for presenting and interacting with the game. This separation provides flexibility in developing and maintaining the application, and also allows you to scale the project by adding new features independently of each other.
Conclusion
Developing the multiplayer Tic-tac-toe game was a great experience in applying modern technologies and design patterns. Choosing Spring Boot and Android as the main platforms allowed us to create a reliable, scalable and interactive application that can serve as a great example for developers to learn and inspire to create their own projects.