How can I debug efficiently in java when I'm using curl?

Question

I'm using Maven/Jetty to run my app and sending post requests to it.

$mvn jetty:run
$curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -XPOST 'http://localhost:8080/hi' -d '{"url":"http://www.subway.com", "operator":1}

Here is an example of my class. It is using RestEasy to hook everything up so that the curl to localhost:8080/hi causes handlePost() to be called:

@Path("/hi")
public class Hi {
    @POST
    @Consumes("application/json")
    @Produces("text/plain")
    public Response handlePost() {
        return Response.status(HttpStatus.SC_OK).entity("hey!").build();
    }
}

Note this will output

"hey!" 

I want to be able to debug my code efficiently, and was wondering if there is a way to

1. Make breakpoints work and debug with IDE (using IntelliJ)
2. Output something simple to the terminal

For #1, I'm not sure where to start. For #2, I tried

System.out.println("hello!");

but it never gets outputted, presumably because I'm not running my program from the terminal?

Answer 1

Instead of using mvn jetty:run to launch your Web application from the command line, launch your application from your IDE. It should attach a debugger and allow you to use your standard tools. The client you use to talk to the application doesn't matter, so curl will work just fine.