I'm trying to use the answers here in order to run this example from Oracle in IntelliJ Idea Community Edition. I've created a new project, copied the source code from the example and enabled Maven support in Idea. I'm able to make and run the project but I can't access the service in the browser. Tomcat keeps throwing 404s. Note that the source code and pom.xml file are untouched.
pom.xml:
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.example.employees</groupId>
<artifactId>employees-app</artifactId>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>employees-app Maven Webapp</name>
<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
<properties>
<tomcat.version>7.0.57</tomcat.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-embed-core</artifactId>
<version>${tomcat.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-embed-logging-juli</artifactId>
<version>${tomcat.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
<version>${tomcat.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-jasper</artifactId>
<version>${tomcat.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-jasper-el</artifactId>
<version>${tomcat.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-jsp-api</artifactId>
<version>${tomcat.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>jstl</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
<version>1.2</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<finalName>employees-app</finalName>
<resources>
<resource>
<directory>src/main/webapp</directory>
<targetPath>META-INF/resources</targetPath>
</resource>
</resources>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
<inherited>true</inherited>
<configuration>
<source>1.8</source>
<target>1.8</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
<finalName>employees-app-${project.version}</finalName>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>com.example.employees.Main</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>single</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Using Process Monitor I've been able to determine that Tomcat associated the root of the website (localhost:8080) with MyProject\target\classes. If I place a dummy txt file in there I can access it via the browser (e.g. localhost:8080/test.txt).
The 'classes' directory is not empty. It contains two sub-directories:
My hunch is that there's something wrong with the folder hierarchy of the output. I'm not sure what or how to fix it. Any ideas?
I figured it out.
As the linked post indicates, it's best to use Heroku's launcher and pom.xml file.
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.heroku.sample</groupId>
<artifactId>embeddedTomcatSample</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<name>embeddedTomcatSample Maven Webapp</name>
<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
<properties>
<tomcat.version>8.0.28</tomcat.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
...tomcat & other deps...
</dependencies>
<build>
<finalName>embeddedTomcatSample</finalName>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>appassembler-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.1.1</version>
<configuration>
<assembleDirectory>target</assembleDirectory>
<programs>
<program>
<mainClass>launch.Main</mainClass>
<name>webapp</name>
</program>
</programs>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>assemble</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
This launcher function does most of the magic by programatically configuring Tomcat to run inside the project's directory.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
String webappDirLocation = "src/main/webapp/";
Tomcat tomcat = new Tomcat();
//The port that we should run on can be set into an environment variable
//Look for that variable and default to 8080 if it isn't there.
String webPort = System.getenv("PORT");
if(webPort == null || webPort.isEmpty()) {
webPort = "8080";
}
tomcat.setPort(Integer.valueOf(webPort));
StandardContext ctx = (StandardContext) tomcat.addWebapp("/", new File(webappDirLocation).getAbsolutePath());
System.out.println("configuring app with basedir: " + new File("./" + webappDirLocation).getAbsolutePath());
// Declare an alternative location for your "WEB-INF/classes" dir
// Servlet 3.0 annotation will work
File additionWebInfClasses = new File("target/classes");
WebResourceRoot resources = new StandardRoot(ctx);
resources.addPreResources(new DirResourceSet(resources, "/WEB-INF/classes",
additionWebInfClasses.getAbsolutePath(), "/"));
ctx.setResources(resources);
tomcat.start();
tomcat.getServer().await();
}
I couldn't figure out how to programatically set the path to Tomcat's conf folder but I was able to overcome this thanks to this answer. Under normal circumstances, Tomcat takes care of setting up the initial context. As a result, the environment variables in a webapp's context.xml file end up in the initial context. Fortunately, it is possible to replicate this via a custom InitialContextFactory.