Getting Started with Maven | Miscellaneous | Running Tomcat to Deploy an App

This article explains how to run Tomcat for a Maven project with the Apache Tomcat Maven Plugin.

Goals

Settings

If no explicit configuration is provided, tomcat7 runs with the following default settings.

• Tomcat manager URL of http://localhost:8080/manager
• Authentication details of username admin and no password
• Context path of /${project.artifactId}

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.2</version>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

If you changed the artifact file name with finalName, change the path in configuration as follows.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
    <configuration>
          <path>/${project.build.finalName}</path>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

Usage

Run the following goal to deploy the current project through the embedded Tomcat.

$ mvn tomcat7:run

Context URL

The context URL is the same as the artifactId. For example, if it is testApp, you can access http://localhost:8080/testApp to check the deployed content. If you changed the artifact with finalName, for example to webApp.war, access it with the same context as finalName, such as http://localhost:8080/webApp. To map the context to /, refer to the configuration below.

Configuration

You can change the HTTP port or AJPPort used by Tomcat.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
    <configuration>
        <path>/</path> <!-- default artifactId -->
        <port>18080</port> <!-- default 8080 -->
        <ajpPort>18009</ajpPort> <!-- default 8009 -->
        <httpsPort>18443</httpsPort> <!-- default 8443 -->
        <contextReloadable>true</contextReloadable>
        <keystoreFile>${user.home}/.keystore</keystoreFile>
        <keystorePass>changeit</keystorePass>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

You can also configure it at runtime with properties in the form maven.tomcat.xxxx. For configurable properties, refer to http://mojo.codehaus.org/tomcat-maven-plugin/run-war-only-mojo.html.

Pass the above settings as properties at runtime.

$ mvn tomcat7:run -Dmaven.tomcat.port=18080 -Dmaven.tomcat.ajp.port=18009 -Dmaven.tomcat.httpsPort=18443 -Dmaven.tomcat.contextReloadable=true -Dmaven.tomcat.path="/"

Loading Required Libraries

To automatically load libraries that must be placed in TOMCAT_HOME/lib, such as JDBC or JCE providers, add a <dependency> to the <plugin> element as follows. (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9928829/tomcat7-maven-plugin-extradependency-seems-not-being-loaded)

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
    <!-- Write libraries that must be placed in Tomcat's lib folder -->
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
       <groupId>postgresql</groupId>
       <artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
       <version>8.4-701.jdbc4</version>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</plugin>

Reference

https://www.lesstif.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=14090451