My java application has more versions of external context.xml, one for each environment. The plan is to have one war file and using the right context.xml for production, staging, dev, etc.
I currently copy/symlink the context.xml into /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.72/conf/Catalina/localhost/myapp.xml. Then I create war file from my sources and I copy it into /usr/local/apache-tomcat-7.0.72/webapps. The catalina is running and explodes the war file in webapps folder. In the same time it deletes my myapp.xml from conf folder. For that reason my app doesn't load the proper configuration and fails. If I copy again the myapp.xml and restart tomcat it works.
Is there a way to tell tomcat to not delete my conf file when extracting war file? Or is there a better place for external context.xml
I guess you have some params in this context.xml for production or stage etc. It's not a good idea to store them there as better approach is to start server with properties and read them in webapp so you never make mistake a.
Look here: https://eureka.ykyuen.info/2009/12/15/tomcat-setting-java-system-properties-for-webapps/
Related
I compiled a Java application into a WAR file, there is a configuration file inside the WAR file. The configuration file is required to change something after deployed to the production server, because it still contains the UAT server parameters.
However, I don't know where to edit the configuration file after deployed in Tomcat. Please help. Thanks.
It doesn't sound like a correct design. You should -
Load configuration file based on some System parameter (e.g. -Denvironment=UAT or PROD). This will be the decision factor for loading the right configuration file.
Do not package the file inside war itself, if possible externalize it to some other directory where amending is lot easier.
I am developing an application using Tomcat. I deploy by copying in a war file and restarting the tomcat serice. However, I have large folders full of images and other ancillary data. My question is: is there an alternative to including all the data in the war file for deployment? Specifically:
1) Can folders in the app folder be "protected" during deployment of a war file so they will not be deleted?
2) Would it be bad practice to upload amended classes and jsp files piecemeal to the app folder rather than re-deploy a whole .war file each time? If it is bad practice, why?
I solved this as follows: store data outside the document root in a folder with the right permissions, then use the "alias" statement in the web server config file.
In my case I am using nginx and my location statement is:
location /MyApp/data{alias /opt/myapp/data;}
Then I can refer to /data within the app.
Question 1: May I ask what is the difference between deploying a java webapp with it's WAR file vs just copy/pasting the build folder into tomcat webapp folder?
Question 2: Somehow I am told to deploy my project just by renaming my /build/web folder to /build/, then copy and paste this folder into tomcat/webapp folder. Tomcat did serve the web app and I could access it via url. But the problem is that I suspect my System variables were not set. I start up a servlet and put this code in this init(ServletConfig config) method:
System.setProperty("LogPath","D:/Test/logs");
And doing this in my log4j.properties
log4j.appender.file.FILE=${LogPath}/wrapper.log
wrapper.log is not found in the designated directory but a stdout.log is found in tomcat/logs folder.
I am sure the init() method was fired because I have a quartz scheduler there. I am suspecting that my System.setProperty was not set. Any hint?
Update: With all the same source code, I have no problem if I am deploying with a WAR file. The ${LogPath} in log4j.properties work as expected.
Let me answer you the first question.
WAR file is a zip archive with different name. When you deploy this file to the Tomcat server, it unpacks this file to its folder as you would do it by copy-paste. If you are just developing your own project in your own environment and you don't want to distribute it, you don't need to create a war file. But if you want to distribute this project, I recommend you to create a war file. One file is easier to be sent.
Read more on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAR_%28file_format%29
I have an application/war deployed in server. Now at runtime I want to add an xml document to the war/application. can I do that? if yes, what is the path of an war/application for it to be added.
You have to repackage the WAR, redeploy, and bounce the server. It's not that simple.
You can make that data available without the hassle if you put it in a database and have your application access it there.
in the webapps/WEB-INF folder you can find the xml files
It depends on the servlet container/application server.
If you are using Tomcat, wars are getting unpacked to the webapps directory inside the Tomcat directory.
Move webapps/app directory outside the webapps directory, what will cause an undeploy of app
Put your xml file into the app directory
Move app back to webapps what will cause a deploy
Currently when I deploy a war file to Tomcat it can be downloaded from the URL via something like foo.com/myapp.war.
Most places recommend that you put an entry in a .htaccess file to prevent public access to any war files, or failing that an equivalent entry in your Apache config.
Unfortunately, my host does not provide access to the Apache config (although I can access Tomcat confs) and .htaccess files do not work for all Tomcat/Java related hosting environments. Pretty disappointing. They have been rather unhelpful in this respect.
Without resorting to something like "finding another host" (other than this issue they are fine - I'd rather stay here until my app grows too big), is there anything else I can do to prevent public users accessing my war files, yet still allow Tomcat to deploy the apps when it scans them?
For example, is it possible to specify one directory for Tomcat to scan for war files yet have it deploy the war into the public directories?
Thanks.
It is probably better to ask at https://serverfault.com/. It all boils down to how Tomcat is setup.
The vanilla setup will have a folder called webapps under CATALINE_HOME. You put your WAR archives there (they get auto-extracted and deployed). These folders will not be accessible from HTTP (you cannot download WAR archives from some URL like /webapps/my-test.war). These apps in webapps folder are deployed to some context roots. For example an application my-test.war will by default get deployed as yourhost.com/my-test/.
If you can download your WAR archives from foo.com/myapp.war maybe you can check out what does the CATALINA_HOME/webapp/ROOT app is doing. By default this is deployed under the foo.com. Ask from the host the Tomcat configuration files to figure what kind of custom configurations are they using.
You can place your .war files in any location Tomcat has access to. But you will have to tell Tomcat about it, so it picks them up. You can do this by placing a configuration XML file in
<CATALINA_HOME>/conf/Catalina/localhost/myWebapp.xml
There are samples on what to put into that file myWebapp.xml, e. g. here, step "4)". And of course, the official documentation.