To add to what Alan said:
If I create a new Eclipse Dynamic Web Project, and name it MyWebApp during the
project setup, in the first window it has a drop down for Target Runtime. That
should be your installed Tomcat on your desktop development machine; Windows in my
case. It starts out with <None> so click the New button next to it and select,
for example, Apache Tomcat v6.0, and then in the next window use the Browse button to
navigate to where Tomcat is installed (C:\Program Files\Apache Software
Foundation\apache-tomcat-v.0.18 for me). You can leave the rest alone and click
Finish.
Next in Eclipse, do Window -> Show View -> Servers. That creates a Servers view
window (tab) somewhere. Click on its tab to bring it forward, then right click in the
Servers window and select New -> Server (strange that we have to do this again, but
at least it's abbreviated this time), and select Tomcat v6.0 Server (or whatever you
selected when you created the project). Then you get the Add and Remove Projects
window; double click on MyWebApp to move it to the right into Configured projects, and
click Finish.
As per the DOS tree command my Eclipse project folder/file structure is then
| .classpath
| .project
|
+---.settings
| .jsdtscope
| org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs
| org.eclipse.jst.common.project.facet.core.prefs
| org.eclipse.wst.common.component
| org.eclipse.wst.common.project.facet.core.xml
| org.eclipse.wst.jsdt.ui.superType.container
| org.eclipse.wst.jsdt.ui.superType.name
|
+---build
| \---classes
+---src
\---WebContent
+---META-INF
| MANIFEST.MF
|
\---WEB-INF
| web.xml
|
\---lib
You can ignore .classpath, .project, and .settings. If you check your project
into Subversion, I recommend telling it to ignore those files; some people
prefer checking them in.
I completely ignore the contents of the build folder; whenever you do a clean
in Eclipse it wipes and removes that folder. The folder of interest for me is
the WebContent folder; its layout and contents is what will ultimately be in
Tomcat as /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/MyWebApp (sorry, switching to Unix parlance
there).
This means that any jar files your project needs go in WebContent/WEB-INF/lib.
Also, you should create the folder WebContent/WEB-INF/classes and put in it those things
that need to be "on the classpath", for example, your logging config file
(e.g., logback.xml or log4j.xml, or log4j.properties if you prefer that confusing
format), and any other properties files and whatnot.
It's instructive to do as Alan says and do the Eclipse export to war and then
list the war file with a zip program to see what it's going to look like when
Tomcat explodes it.
Static jsp files will go directly in the WebContent folder (e.g., index.jsp). Dynamic
jsp files will probably go in some subdirectory of WEB-INF; for example, I use Spring and
I've configured it to look for the "views" in WEB-INF/views/jsp, with even more
folders in that if I'm using something like Tiles.
Back in Eclipse, in the Servers tab/window, is an entry for Tomcat, and the
controls for that are at the top of the tab; the green circle arrow starts
Tomcat and when it's started the red square stops it. In theory, and perhaps
in practice, you can edit your .java files and do a compile/build in Eclipse
and Tomcat will automatically reload them. I'm superstitious from back in the
day when that didn't always work and try to remember to stop Tomcat before I do
a build. This implies that I have Eclipse configured to not automatically
build when I do a Save on a file. If Tomcat does get wedged in Eclipse; for
example, changes stop showing, you can simply delete the Tomcat instance from
Eclipse by right clicking on it in the Servers window/tab and selecting Delete,
then re-add it and add your project to it.
Note that when you start and run Tomcat from within Eclipse it's not deploying
your project to your installed Tomcat; it's using the installed Tomcat's jar
files and copying/creating its own Tomcat configuration files into your project
space and running it all in there. It's all rather magical and, surprisingly,
given all the apparent black magic, works quite nicely.
It gets even more black magical if you use Maven and use the m2eclipse Maven
plugin for Eclipse, but I think it's really worth it to climb that mountain
because it gives you a great base for a consistent and maintainable project
structure.
Alan Chaney wrote:
In Eclipse, assuming you have the WTP tools installed, you create a
'Dynamic Web Project.'
This has a folder structure of which the essence is:
MyApp
src
com
mypackage
Abc.java
build
com
mypackage
Abc.class
WebContent
index.html (or jsp or whatever)
WEB-INF
web.xml
lib
a.jar
b.jar
In the above com.mypackage.Abc.java is your web application, and a.jar
and b.jar are any runtime libraries that application requires (NOT stuff
already in $TOMCAT_HOME/lib)
When you compile and run applications within eclipse it copies the
WebContent structure to the webapps directory of its (internal) tomcat,
and in WEB-INF creates a folder called classes and copies the contents
of the 'build' folder their.
This normally happens automatically every time you start the server
inside eclipse.
When you want to deploy the project to an external instance of tomcat
(eg a production server) you right-click on the Export.. option in the
project context menu and then select WAR (there's a suprise). The war
file by default has the project name (in the above expample MyApp.war.
This should be copied to the webapps folder of the tomcat instance and
if you've stuck to the normal server.xml configuration it should deploy.
It will be available at http://the.tomcat.instance:8080/MyApp/index.html
(or jspt or whatever)
This is an incredibly brief summary of what is undoubtedly an obscure
and complex process for the new-comer (been there.. done that...) and
which sadly is not especially well EXPLAINED anywhere that I have found.
There are some 'cookbook' type recipes on the web, which are often
inconsitent.
Hope that helps
Alan Chaney (a daily eclipse user, but hardly an eclipse guru...)
Markus Schönhaber wrote:
Tom Blank:
The reason why I'm asking is, because I'm using eclipse and its
'dynamic web project' structure.
I'm no Eclipse user either, but AFAIR the folder "Webapps" is part of an
Eclipse Dynamic Web Project. And a project folder is not meant to be
simply copied to Tomcat's appBase (judging from your OP, it seems to me
that's what you've been doing).
You could, for example, export your project to a WAR file and deploy
this.
Experienced Eclipse users may know of other/better ways of deployment.
You might consider asking in the appropriate Eclipse
mailinglist/newsgroup.
Regards
mks
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