How to Create War Files

How to create war files

You can use Ant to set up, compile, WAR, and deploy your solution.

<target name="default" depends="setup,compile,buildwar,deploy"></target>

You can then execute one click in Eclipse to run that Ant target. Here are examples of each of the steps:

Preconditions

We'll assume that you have your code organized like:

• ${basedir}/src: Java files, properties, XML config files
• ${basedir}/web: Your JSP files
• ${basedir}/web/lib: Any JARs required at runtime
• ${basedir}/web/META-INF: Your manifest
• ${basedir}/web/WEB-INF: Your web.xml files

Set up

Define a setup task that creates the distribution directory and copies any artifacts that need to be WARred directly:

<target name="setup">
    <mkdir dir="dist" />
    <echo>Copying web into dist</echo>
    <copydir dest="dist/web" src="web" />
    <copydir dest="dist/web/WEB-INF/lib" src="${basedir}/../web/WEB-INF/lib" />
</target>

Compile

Build your Java files into classes and copy over any non-Java artifacts that reside under src but need to be available at runtime (e.g. properties, XML files, etc.):

<target name="compile">
    <delete dir="${dist.dir}/web/WEB-INF/classes" />
    <mkdir dir="${dist.dir}/web/WEB-INF/classes" />
    <javac destdir="${dist.dir}/web/WEB-INF/classes" srcdir="src">
        <classpath>
            <fileset dir="${basedir}/../web/WEB-INF/lib">
                  <include name="*" />
            </fileset>
        </classpath>
    </javac>
    <copy todir="${dist.dir}/web/WEB-INF/classes">
        <fileset dir="src">
            <include name="**/*.properties" />
            <include name="**/*.xml" />
        </fileset>
    </copy>
</target>

Build WAR

Create the WAR itself:

<target name="buildwar">
    <war basedir="${basedir}/dist/web" destfile="My.war"
     webxml="${basedir}/dist/web/WEB-INF/web.xml">
        <exclude name="WEB-INF/**" />
        <webinf dir="${basedir}/dist/web/WEB-INF/">
            <include name="**/*.jar" />
        </webinf>
    </war>
</target>

Deploy

Finally, you can set up a task to deploy the WAR directly into your Tomcat deploy location:

<target name="deploy">
    <copy file="My.war" todir="${tomcat.deploydir}" />
</target>

Click and go!

Once all this is set up, simply launching the default target from Eclipse will compile, WAR, and deploy your solution.

The advantage of this approach is that it will work outside Eclipse as well as within Eclipse and can be used to easily share your deployment strategy (e.g. via source control) with other developers who are also working on your project.

Generate war file from tomcat webapp folder

You can create .war file back from your existing folder.

Using this command

cd /to/your/folder/location
jar -cvf my_web_app.war *

How to create a war file for my java web application project from terminal without using eclipse

In pom.xml, add the following line

<packaging>war</packaging>    // Replace <packaging>jar</packaging> if jar packaging already present

And then go to the parent directory of the project and enter mvn package. war file will be generated in

/parent_directory/target/myproject.war

If you want to access your project as http://localhost:8080 rather than http://localhost:8080/myproject, rename myproject.war to ROOT.war and paste the war file in webapps of tomcat directory.

How to create a WAR file using the commandline?

Alright here is a already existing SO with a couple of possibilities on how to create a war file: How to create war files.

I personaly prefer Maven over any other build scenario - Since i migrated from ANT i did not like Maven in the first place but after investing like a day or two into the documentations: http://maven.apache.org/pom.html i started to love it. In your case all you need is refactor your project to meet the maven standard file structure and create a minimum Maven project (a.k.a. pom.xml file) for your sources that has the packaging war instead of the default jar.

If you want to stick with the console only and dont use any build helpers beside the ones delivered by the JDK you can create your war with something like this:

jar cvf my-app.war

Have a look at this: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/jar/build.html for a complete reference of the supported options.

(Note: A "war" in the context of java based web applications follows a standard format: http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/tutorial/doc/bnaby.html while the technical ".war" file is just the same as a ZIP compressed folder renamed to ".zip".)

(Also note i would realy take the time to get in touch with maven since after that you know about a serious build tool and will be able to create jar, ear, war etc. in a standard process).

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