Deploying using the Client Deployer Package

Finally, deployment of web application may be achieved using the Tomcat Client Deployer. This is a package which can be used to validate, compile, compress to .WAR, and deploy web applications to production or development Tomcat servers. It should be noted that this feature uses the Tomcat Manager and as such the target Tomcat server should be running.

It is assumed the user will be familiar with Apache Ant for using the TCD. Apache Ant is a scripted build tool. The TCD comes pre-packaged with a build script to use. Only a modest understanding of Apache Ant is required (installation as listed earlier in this page, and familiarity with using the operating system command shell and configuring environment variables).

The TCD includes Ant tasks, the Jasper page compiler for JSP compilation before deployment, as well as a task which validates the web application Context Descriptor. The validator task (classorg.apache.catalina.ant.ValidatorTask) allows only one parameter: the base path of an exploded web application.

The TCD uses an exploded web application as input. A web application that is programmatically deployed with the deployer may include a Context Descriptor in /META-INF/context.xml.

The TCD includes a ready-to-use Ant script, with the following targets:

• Compile (default): Compile and validate the web application. This can be used standalone, and does not need a running Tomcat server. The compiled application will only run on the associated Tomcat X.Y.Z server release, and is not guaranteed to work on another Tomcat release, as the code generated by Jasper depends on its runtime component. It should also be noted that this target will also compile automatically any Java source file located in the /WEB-INF/classes folder of the web application.
• Deploy: Deploy a web application (compiled or not) to a Tomcat server.
• underplay: Underplay a web application
• start: Start web application
• reload: Reload web application
• stop: Stop web application

In order for the deployment to be configured, create a file called deployer.properties in the TCD installation directory root. In this file, add the following name=value pairs per line:

Additionally, you will need to ensure that a user has been setup for the target Tomcat Manager (which TCD uses) otherwise the TCD will not authenticate with the Tomcat Manager and the deployment will fail. To do this, see the Tomcat Manager page.

• Build: The build folder used will be, by default, ${build}/webapp/${path} (${build}, by default, points to${basedir}/build). After the end of the execution of the compile target, the web application .WAR will be located at ${build}/webapp/${path}.war.
• webapp: The directory containing the exploded web application which will be compiled and validated. By default, the folder is myapp.
• path: Deployed context path of the web application, by default /myapp.
• url: Absolute URL to the Tomcat Manager web application of a running Tomcat server, which will be used to deploy and undeploy the web application. By default, the deployer will attempt to access a Tomcat instance running on localhost, at http://localhost:8080/manager/text.
• username: Tomcat Manager username (user should have a role of manager-script)
• password: Tomcat Manager password.