Using Maven with application servers

Please note that this article describe an advanced usage. For new users we recommend to use the WTP integration. See the WTP mini howto

There are several Maven plugins that allow to deploy web applications to various Web and JEE Containers, such as JBoss, Geronimo, WebSphere, Weblogic and others. A developer can use these plugins from the command line of from the IDE instead of relying on deployment features in tools like WTP. More over, some of those plugins allow to start and stop web application servers (for example Jetty or Cargo plugin that support multiple application servers).

If you want to start web servers from WTP, you'll need to configure server adapter as described in WTP documentation.

(TODO)

Then you can build web application project from the command line or using Maven launch configuration with m2eclipse (build, package, install).

To deploy (or start servers) with Maven you'll need to configure corresponding plugins in to pom.xml in your Web/EJB/EAR projects. Please consult Maven guides and plugins documentation for more details. Below we show several configuration examples for different application servers:

Geronimo
JBoss
Weblogic

Please feel free to expand this document with your own examples.

It is a good idea to put server configuration, such as properties specific for the local environment, into the global settings.xml because then the developer can alter the configuration parameters without changing the POM files.

Geronimo

The following example shows configuration for Geronimo Maven plugin that support goals geronimo:deploy, geronimo:undeploy, geronimo:start and geronimo:stop.

Maven plugins provide some functionality not available from WTP. Also different plugins for different servers will have different goals (e.g. geronimo:list-modules). Please consult the plugin documentation to learn what the plugin can do.

Plugin configuration in pom.xml

<build>
    ...
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>geronimo-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <configuration>
            <geronimoHome>${geronimo.home}</geronimoHome>
            <logOutput>true</logOutput>
            <moduleArchive>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}</moduleArchive>
            <assemblies>
                <assembly>
                    <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.assemblies</groupId>
                    <artifactId>geronimo-jetty-j2ee</artifactId>
                    <version>1.2-beta</version>
                    <classifier>bin</classifier>
                    <type>zip</type>
                </assembly>
            </assemblies>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
    ...
</build>

Profile configuration

<profile>
    <id>geronimo</id>
    <activation>
        <activeByDefault/>
    </activation>
    <properties>
        <geronimo.home>${user.home}/Development/Servers/geronimo-1.1.1</geronimo.home>
    </properties>
</profile>

JBoss

Sample configuration for JBoss Maven plugin

Plugin configuration in pom.xml

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>jboss-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.3.1</version>
    <configuration>
        <jbossHome>${jboss.home}</jbossHome>
        <serverName>${jboss.server.name}</serverName>
        <hostName>${jboss.host.name}</hostName>
        <port>${jboss.port}</port>
        <deployUrlPath>${jboss.deploy.url}</deployUrlPath>
        <undeployUrlPath>${jboss.undeploy.url}</undeployUrlPath>
        <fileName>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}</fileName>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Profile configuration

<profile>
    <id>jboss</id>
    <activation>
        <activeByDefault/>
    </activation>
    <properties>
        <jboss.home>${jboss.home}</jboss.home>
        <jboss.server.name>default</jboss.server.name>
        <jboss.host.name>localhost</jboss.host.name>
        <jboss.port>8080</jboss.port>
        <jboss.deploy.url>
            <![CDATA[
                /jmx-console/HtmlAdaptor?action=invokeOpByName&name=jboss.system:service%3DMainDeployer&methodName=deploy&argType=java.net.URL&arg0=
            ]]>
        </jboss.deploy.url>
        <jboss.undeploy.url>
            <![CDATA[
                /jmx-console/HtmlAdaptor?action=invokeOpByName&name=jboss.system:service%3DMainDeployer&methodName=undeploy&argType=java.net.URL&arg0=
            ]]>
        </jboss.undeploy.url>
    </properties>
</profile>

Weblogic

Sample configuration for Weblogic Maven plugin

Plugin configuration in pom.xml

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>weblogic-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.9.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <configuration>
        <adminServerHostName>${weblogic.host.name}</adminServerHostName>
        <adminServerPort>${weblogic.port}</adminServerPort>
        <adminServerProtocol>${weblogic.protocol}</adminServerProtocol>
        <userId>${weblogic.user}</userId>
        <password>${weblogic.password}</password>
        <upload>false</upload>
        <remote>true</remote>
        <verbose>false</verbose>
        <debug>true</debug>
        <targetNames>${weblogic.target}</targetNames>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Profile configuration

<profile>
    <id>weblogic</id>
    <activation>
        <activeByDefault/>
    </activation>
    <properties>
        <weblogic.host.name>localhost</weblogic.host.name>
        <weblogic.port>7001</weblogic.port>
        <weblogic.protocol>http</weblogic.protocol>
        <weblogic.user>weblogic</weblogic.user>
        <weblogic.password>weblogic</weblogic.password>
        <weblogic.target>cgServer</weblogic.target>
    </properties>
</profile>

Using Maven with application servers

Geronimo

JBoss

Weblogic

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