Exercises Guide

Exercise 0. Setting up your hands-on

environment
Estimated time
01:00

Overview
This exercise guides you through the setup that you must complete before you perform the
exercises in this course.

Introduction
Before you can perform the exercises in this course, you must install cURL and a text editor on
your computer and create an account on IBM Cloud to access IBM Watson Studio.

Objectives
After completing this exercise, you should have:
• An IBM Cloud Lite account.
• cURL installed on your computer.
• A text editor installed on your computer.

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Exercise instructions
In this exercise, you complete the following tasks:
__ 1. Create a free IBM Cloud account (IBM Cloud Lite account).
__ 2. Download and install cURL.
__ 3. Download and install a text editor.

Part 1. Creating a free IBM Cloud account (IBM Cloud Lite account)
In this part, you create an IBM Cloud Lite account. This account gives you access to the IBM
Cloud resources that you need to perform the exercises. This account never expires, so you can
continue to use it after the class. For more information about an IBM Cloud Lite account, see
Introducing the IBM Cloud Lite account.

Important: The following list specifies the minimum required browser software for IBM Cloud:
• Chrome: The latest version for your operating system.
• Firefox: The latest regular and ESR versions for your operating system. For more information,
see Mozilla Firefox Extended Support Release.
• Microsoft Edge: The latest version for Windows.
• Safari: The latest version for MacOS.

Note: If you already have an IBM Cloud account, skip to Part 2.

You must register with IBM Cloud by providing a valid email address. Your email address acts as
your username for IBM Cloud, and you provide a password for it. The email address that you use
to register with IBM Cloud and the password that you provide on registration also become your
IBM ID. You can use this IBM ID to log in to other IBM websites that require you to enter your IBM
ID and password.
When you sign up to IBM Cloud, you are prompted for your demographic information (such as
your name and country). An email is sent to the email account that you provide in the registration
to confirm that your email account is valid and active.

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Complete the following steps:

__ 1. Go to the IBM Cloud website at https://cloud.ibm.com/login

__ 2. Click Create an account.

__ 3. Complete the Create an IBM Cloud account form by entering your information.

Note: You must use a valid email for signing up to IBM Cloud because IBM Cloud sends you an
email to verify your account.

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__ 4. Click Next.
__ 5. A 7-digit verification code is sent to the email account that you used to create the IBM
Cloud account. Enter the verification code and click Next.

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__ 6. After you successfully verify your email account, add your personal information and click
Next.

__ 7. Click Create Account

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Important: If you already have an IBM ID that is associated with your email, the following window
opens.

If you already have an IBM Cloud account, click Log in to verify that you can access IBM Cloud.

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__ 8. Wait until your account is successfully created.

__ 9. Next, the IBMid account privacy notice page opens.

__ 10. Read and acknowledge the notice and click Proceed.

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__ 11. You should now be logged in and redirected to your account’s dashboard. If not, confirm
that you can log in to IBM Cloud:
__ a. Click Log in.
__ b. Enter the email and password that you used to register to IBM Cloud. You should
be able to access the environment.
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You now successfully signed up for an IBM Cloud account. You are ready to log in to IBM Cloud
when directed to do so by the exercises in this course. Close the browser.

Part 2. Installing cURL

cURL is a command-line tool for transferring data by using various protocols. You use cURLin
some exercises to run commands.
To check whether cURL is already installed on your computer, open a command prompt
(Windows) or terminal (MacOS), type curl -V, and press Enter.
If cURL is already install, the output is similar to the following figure.

Installing cURL on WIndows

To download and install cURL on Windows, complete the following steps:

__ 1. Access the cURL download wizard.

__ 2. Click curl executable under the “Select Type of Package” section.

__ 3. Select your operating system from the Show package for: drop-down menu and then click
Select.

Note: The following figures show the installation for Window 64-bit as an example. Follow the
equivalent steps for your operating system.

__ 4. Under Show package for: select Generic and then click Select!

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__ 5. Follow the prompts and select the specific options for your operating system. Accept the
defaults if you do not know which options are more suitable for you.
__ 6. The installation wizard recommends an executable file that best fits your choices. Make

sure to select the SSL-enabled version of cURL and click the green download ( )
button to start the cURL executable file download.

Note: For Windows, you might need to choose the type of your OS. For example, if you are using
Windows 64-bit, click the green download button for curl for 64 bit.

__ 7. Click Save File to save the installer file.

__ 8. Extract the downloaded zip archive.

__ 9. Move the extracted folder to your C:\Program Files.

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__ 10. Copy the full path of the bin folder of cURL, for example, C:\Program Files\curl-7.74.0_2-
win64-mingw\bin.
__ 11. Click the Start menu, then type environment.
__ 12. Select Edit the system environment variables. The System Properties window opens.
__ 13. In the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.
__ 14. Under System variables, select the Path variable, then click Edit.
__ 15. Click New.
__ 16. In the new line, paste the path of the bin folder that you copied in step __ 10.
__ 17. Click OK to close the Edit environment variable dialog.
__ 18. Click OK to close the Environment variables dialog.
__ 19. Click the Start menu. Then open Command Prompt.
__ 20. Type curl -V, then press Enter. The version of cURL that you installed should now be
displayed.

Installing cURL on macOS

Complete the following steps:

__ 1. Open a terminal.
__ 2. Run the following command:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" <
/dev/null 2> /dev/null
__ 3. Install cURL by running the following brew command:
brew install curl

Part 3. Downloading and installing a text editor

You need an editing tool during the exercises.

Installing Notepad++ on Windows

To install Notepad++ on Windows, complete the following steps:
__ 1. Go to https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/.
__ 2. Select the latest release to download.
__ 3. Run the installer after the download completes.
__ 4. Follow the instructions on the installer UI and select the default options.
After you successfully installed Notepad++, it should be added to the Windows Start Apps menu.

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Installing Sublime Text on macOS

To install Sublime Text on MacOS, complete the following steps:
__ 1. Go to https://www.sublimetext.com/
__ 2. Click Download for Mac.
__ 3. Run the installer after it downloads.
__ 4. Follow the instructions on the installer UI and select the default options.

End of exercise

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Exercise review and wrap-up

After completing this exercise, you should have your environment ready to start working with the
classroom exercises in this course. You registered for IBM Cloud Lite account. You downloaded
and installed cURL, and an editing tool.

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