Maven: Use Maven to package a “.war” file (Ready to deploy in Tomcat)

maven

Posted By: admin May 30, 2018

Tomcat is an application server that requires the jave (.jsp) and related files to be packaged in to a “.war” file before uploading then to the server. Once the war file is uploaded, the server unpacks it and does the magic.

A “.war” fale can be created using Maven, using the command “mvn package“, OR simple using the “jar -cvf <file name>.war <list of files or folders to be compressed>“.

 

Create a “.war” file using Maven

  • Let us find the version of Maven installed in our host.

[root@gw16-lap-devops /]# mvn –version
Apache Maven 3.5.3 (3383c37e1f9e9b3bc3df5050c29c8aff9f295297; 2018-02-25T01:19:05+05:30)
Maven home: /opt/maven
Java version: 1.8.0_171, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.171-8.b10.el7_5.x86_64/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: “linux”, version: “3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64”, arch: “amd64”, family: “unix”

Let us assume that we want to create a new project in a new folder named MySecondWebApp, inside the root folder “/data2″. We want all the source codes to be uploaded to tomcat to be grouped inside a group name “shijuvarghese.com“. We can use Maven to layout the necessary folder structure and also create the “pom.xml” file to use to create the “.war” file.

  • [root@gw16-lap-devops /]# mkdir /data2
  • [root@gw16-lap-devops /]# cd /data2
  • Use Maven to generat the archetype suitable to packagethe “.war” file
    [root@gw16-lap-devops /]# mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp -DarchetypeVersion=1.3
  • When prompted for “Define value for property ‘groupId’:” enter the value “shijuvarghese.com“
  • When prompted for “Define value for property ‘artifactId’:” enter the value “MySecondWebApp“
  • When prompted for “Define value for property ‘version’ 1.0-SNAPSHOT: :” just hit enter
  • When prompted for “Define value for property ‘package’ shijuvarghese.com: :” enter “war“
  • Now enter “Y” to confirm the values entered.

Verify the folder Maven has created inside the “/data2” folder. In the folder “/data2/MySecondWebApp/src/main/webapp/” a simple “index.jsp” page too will be created along with the “WEB-INF” folder. Checkout the “pom.xml” file “/data2/MySecondWebApp/pom.xml”

 

  • Let us create another “.jsp” file too as an example.
    [root@gw16-lap-devops shijuvarghese]# vi /data2/MySecondWebApp/src/main/webapp/trial.jsp
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <body>
    <%
    for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
    out.println(“Hello World !!”);
    }
    %>
    </body>
    </html>
  • Now let us package the content of “/data2/MySecondWebApp/” using the “pom.xml” file created by Maven. Go to the folder “/data2/MySecondWebApp/”
    [root@gw16-lap-devops /]# cd /data2/MySecondWebApp/
  • Run the following run command to delete any folder files created earlier by Maven using this “pom.xml” file , and then package the files to a “.war” file inside the folder “/data2/MySecondWebApp/target/“. Look for a line that reads “[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS” to ensure the build was successful after running the below command.
    [root@gw16-lap-devops MySecondWebApp]# mvn clean package