Java Developer Nanodegree 

Program Syllabus   
Learn the de-facto language for building enterprise-scale 
applications 
 
 
 
 

Program Overview 
The ultimate goal of the Java Developer Nanodegree program is to equip students with the unique skills 
they need to build enterprise-scale applications with Java. A graduate of this program will be able to: 
 
● Understand the fundamentals of Java, while being introduced to a Spring Boot framework and 
associated integrations and plugins.  
● Describe the differences between web services, APIs, and microservices, develop REST and GraphQL 
APIs, and learn how to secure, consume, document, and test those APIs and web services. 
● Work with relational and non-relational databases, use Java to read/write and build test cases for 
MySQL and MongoDB, and build persistence for Java applications. 
● Learn about Git, version control, and best practices for authorization and authentication. Use Jenkins 
to build CI/CD pipeline to deploy code to production. 
 
This program is comprised of 4 courses and 4 projects. Each project you build will be an opportunity to 
demonstrate what you’ve learned in the lesson, and will demonstrate to potential employers that you have 
skills in these areas. 
 
 
Estimated Length of Program: 4 months 
Frequency of Classes: Self-paced 
Prerequisite Knowledge: Intermediate knowledge of any programming language, preferably an 
object-oriented language (e.g, Python, C++). Some web development experience desirable but not required.  
 
 
 

 
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Project 1: Create a Chat Room Application with Spring Boot 

In this project, students will use the skills acquired in the first course to build a web-based chat room 
application using spring boot and websocket components. Students will implement the message model and 
controller to build an in-memory application. Students will also use Thymeleaf to create web pages to the 
build user login flow and chat room interface. Once the application is ready, students will create web driver 
tests to make sure the web application has sufficient test coverage. 

Supporting Course Content: Java Basics 

Lesson  Learning Outcomes 

Introduction to Java  ➔ Use different data structures and algorithms in Java and calculate 
time complexity of the code 
➔ Implement exception handling, file IO, BufferReader 

Spring Boot Servlet, Filter  ➔ Describe how the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture works  
and Listener  ➔ Configure Spring Boot and create Spring Boot servlet, filter and 
listener, from scratch 
➔ Interact with static resources in a Spring Boot application 

Spring Boot with Thymeleaf  ➔ Manage spring boot application with Maven plugins 
and Mybatis  ➔ Create web pages with Thymeleaf 
➔ Integrate Spring Boot with Mybatis 

Spring Boot Web Socket  ➔ Implement Spring Boot websocket structure and components. 
with spring boot tests  ➔ Create the message model and implement chat room controller. 
➔ Create web driver tests to ensure test coverage. 
 

Project 2: Build the Backend System for a Car Website 

In this course, the student will build a backend system for a web site of cars. This backend will be composed 
of vehicles list services, pricing services, and location services as mentioned below: 
 
● Vehicles API - a REST API to maintain vehicles data (CRUD) 
● Pricing Service - a REST API to retrieve the price of a vehicle 
● Location API - a HTTP client to retrieve the location of the vehicle 
 
In the project students will use Java APIs and frameworks to integrate different services using different 
communication styles. Students will write the CRUD operations to store and retrieve vehicle data and 
implement an HTTP client to retrieve the address of the vehicle given the latitude and longitude. Students 
will also integrate the clients (Vehicle API) with pricing services to retrieve the price. Lastly, students will learn 
to use Swagger to efficiently create documentation for their APIs. 

 
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During the development of these steps, the student will be guided to write unit tests, error handling, 
logging, and other best practices. 

Supporting Course Content: Web Services and APIs 

Lesson  Learning Outcomes 

Web Services & APIs ➔ Describe web services and their advantages 
Overview ➔ Describe how web services communicate 
➔ Explore the differences between web services, APIs, and 
microservices 

Develop REST APIs with ➔ Describe the REST architectural style and the importance of data 
Spring Boot formats 
➔ Develop a REST API using Spring Boot and incorporate exception 
handling.  
➔ Use proper HTTP response codes 

Develop GraphQL APIs ➔ Describe GraphQL and its advantages over REST 
with Spring Boot ➔ Create a GraphQL schema 
➔ Develop a GraphQL server and API using Spring Boot 
➔ Use GraphQL to execute queries and operations on data 

Develop Microservices ➔ Describe the Microservices Architecture (MSA) 

with Spring Boot ➔ Expose a microservice using Spring Boot 
➔ Register a microservice 

Secure API Endpoints with ➔ Describe Spring Security 

Spring Security ➔ Explain the differences between authentication vs authorization 
➔ Incorporate Basic Authentication practices to secure an API 

Consume Web Services ➔ Consume a REST API 

and APIs ➔ Consume a SOAP-based web service  
➔ Fetch and process XML and JSON  

Document REST APIs ➔ Describe Swagger, a

​ n open-source software framework to design, 
build, document, and consume RESTful web services 
➔ Add Swagger annotations to model 
➔ Generate API documentation 

Test REST APIs ➔ Describe and explain unit and integration testing 
➔ Incorporate unit and integration testing into a REST API 
 
 

 
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Project 3: Data Store for Customer Reviews 

Students will build the polyglot persistence layer for a REST API that will support the customer reviews 
section of a product page in an ecommerce application. Students will begin with setting up MySQL & 
MongoDB and define classes for MongoDB model. Students will then update the persistence service to 
read/write from both MySQL and MongoDB, and write code to calculate aggregate rating for a product. 
Students will also build corresponding test cases for JPA & MongoDB repositories and wire the persistence 
service to the already provided REST Controller. By the end of this project, students will have built a fully 
functioning REST API with persistence in Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) that can be 
inspected via a tool like Postman. 

Supporting Course Content: Data Stores & Persistence 

Lesson  Learning Outcomes 

RDBMS & JDBC  ➔ Describe the structure of relational databases (MySQL) and explain 
ACID compliance. 
➔ Write SQL queries to operate on relational databases. 
➔ Use Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API to build persistence for 
a Java application. 
➔ Use Flyway to perform database migrations. 

Java Persistence API  ➔ Describe the benefits and uses for Object Relational Mapping and 
Java Persistence API (JPA). 
➔ Explain the concepts behind Spring Data project. 
➔ Develop a Spring Boot app that defines a Repository. 
➔ Use Spring and H2 for testing database code. 

NoSQL & MongoDB  ➔ Describe NoSQL, non relational databases and flexible schema. 
➔ Describe the use cases for the document oriented database 
MongoDB. 
➔ Use Mongo shell to perform different operations such as 
create/modify collections, select/create/update/delete documents 
and aggregations. 
➔ Describe the pros & cons of nested documents and document 
references. 

MongoDB for Java  ➔ Connect to MongoDB from Java. 

➔ Use Spring Data MongoDB to connect to MongoDB. 
➔ Define document relationships. 
➔ Define Repository and Repository methods that use filters, sort 
and pagination. 
➔ Use Embedded MongoDB for testing Repositories. 

 
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Project 4: Implement Authorization for an eCommerce Application   

In this project, students will add authorization using Spring Security with OAuth and username/password 
combinations to an eCommerce web application created in Spring Boot. Proper security and hashing will 
need to be implemented to store this data as well. Students will identify the right metrics for an effective 
analytics environment and use either Splunk or ELK to analyze the metrics. Students will also automate the 
configuration and deployment of these systems and the application. Students will use Jenkins to integrate 
with their version control and deploy their application to AWS.  

Supporting Course Content: Security and DevOps 

Lesson  Learning Outcomes 

Git  ➔ Learn the basics of git such as branching, pull requests, and 
merging 
➔ Describe what version control is and means 

Authorization and  ➔ Identify the need for security in modern day web applications 
Authentication  ➔ Describe best practices for authorization and authentication 
➔ Implement modern authorization and authentication technologies 
such as password hashing and JWT 

Testing  ➔ Learn and use testing frameworks such as junit 

➔ Describe the concept of code coverage and its importance 
➔ Implement negative testing as well as happy path testing 

Logging and Analytics  ➔ Identify important application metrics and log them 
➔ Send logs to Splunk 
➔ Create visualizations and dashboards in Splunk to display those 
metrics 

Jenkins and CI/CD  ➔ Describe and explain CI/CD  

➔ Create a build pipeline using Jenkins 
➔ Build a Docker Image 
➔ Create a CI pipeline for a Docker Image 
➔ Deploy Docker container in production 
 

 
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