How to create a Maven web app and deploy to Tomcat - fast

http://www.blogjava.net/sealyu/archive/2010/01/08/308706.html

Procedure

• Prerequisites and Assumptions
• Step One - Prepare the Tomcat Manager application
• Step Two - Create a New Web App Using Maven
• Step Three - Define Your Tomcat Server in Maven Settings
• Step Four - Point Your Pom to Your Tomcat Server
• Step Five - Build and Deploy the Web App

Prerequisites and Assumptions

• Maven is already installed
• A local instance of Tomcat is already installed and configured to run on port 8080
• Optional - Eclipse is installed

Step One - Prepare the Tomcat Manager application

In order to deploy a web app to your Tomcat server, you will need to ensure that you can access the Tomcat Manager application at: http://localhost:8080/manager/html. Typically, you just need to ensure that your <tomcat>/conf/tomcat-users.xml file has the following defined:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>

<tomcat-users>

<role rolename="manager"/>

<role rolename="admin"/>

<user username="admin" password="admin" roles="admin,manager"/>

</tomcat-users>

In this case, we will be logging in to the Tomcat Manager app using:

username	admin
password	admin

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Step Two - Create a New Web App Using Maven

Next, we will use a Maven archetype to generate a new web application project.

Assuming that you will primarily use Eclipse as your IDE, you may wish to start the project within Eclipse. We'll start the project within Eclipse and then use Maven to fill the project in with the proper Maven web app structure.

• In Eclipse create a new General project. New > Project... > General > Project
• Project name: "sw" (name it what you wish, but remember to replace 'sw' with your project name in all instances where that appears in this document from here on out.)

The steps above just create a General project in your Eclipse workspace (e.g. a folder with a .project settings file inside of it).

Next, open a command prompt, cd into the 'sw' project directory, and then execute the following Maven command (all on one line):

mvn archetype:create

-DgroupId=com.burlesontech.sw

-DartifactId=webapp

-DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp

You project will now have the following structure:

• sw
  • webapp
    • src
      • main
        • resources
        • webapp
          • WEB-INF
            • web.xml
          • index.jsp
    • pom.xml
  • .project

In Eclipse, right-click on the project and select Refresh to see this stuff within Eclipse. (Note that the .project file will typically not appear within Eclipse, but it is there.)

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Step Three - Define Your Tomcat Server in Maven Settings

Open your Maven settings.xml file (e.g. C:"Documents and Settings"Administrator".m2"settings.xml) and add a server 'myserver' with the credentials for logging into the Tomcat Manager application:

<settings>

<servers>

<server>

<id>myserver</id>

<username>admin</username>

<password>admin</password>

</server>

</servers>

...

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Step Four - Point Your Pom to Your Tomcat Server

Open the pom.xml file in the 'sw' project and replace the <build> section so that it looks like this:

<build>

<finalName>sw</finalName>

<plugins>

<plugin>

<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>

<artifactId>tomcat-maven-plugin</artifactId>

<configuration>

<server>myserver</server>

<path>/sw</path>

</configuration>

</plugin>

</plugins>

</build>

Here, we have added the Tomcat plugin for Maven. Note that the <configuration> section needs to point to the server you defined in settings.xml ('myserver'). The <finalName> and the <path> are used to tell the web context that you want to deploy to. In this case, we'll be able to access our application at http://localhost:8080/sw.

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Step Five - Build and Deploy the Web App

On a command prompt, you can now cd into the sw/webapp directory where the project pom exists. The execute the following command:

mvn tomcat:deploy

If you get a BUILD SUCCESSFUL message, you should then be able to access your web application at http://localhost:8080/sw/.

You should see "Hello World!" in your web browser (from the index.jsp page). Now you're all set and ready to start building the next killer web app!

If you try to deploy again with the same command, you will likely get a FAIL message because the application already exists at the path. For successive deployments, use the following command instead:

mvn tomcat:redeploy

Next, you may want to enable log4j logging for your new application; check out How to setup Log4j in a web app - fast.