How to use Tomcat with maven correctly in Eclipse

Question

I'm looking for the best way how to use Tomcat in Eclipse with Maven.

I have some experience developing Java EE applications and I'm expecting similar behavior when using Maven.

My requirements are simple:

easy application building
easy deployment
if possible, hot swap

I do not know how Tomcat + Eclipse work in detail so I assumed that Maven command

mvn eclipse:eclipse -Dwtpversion=2.0

setups everything correctly, but I've got suspicion it's not working well (or at least as expected).

When project (let's call it test) is built in maven, result is in ${project}/target/test folder. But it seems to me that classes for Tomcat are from different folder (${project}/target/classes ?). This is IMHO wrong (correct me if I'm wrong), but maven can do other actions before building classes - code generation, resource filtering, AOP weaving and so on.

Are there some recommendations how to use it? Because performing mvn clean install from command line and deploying the result to Tomcat doesn't sound to me as IDE (Integrated development environment). It is possible to instruct maven eclipse plugin to setup it correctly?

I also tried to use mvn tomcat:run but here I'm completely lost, I'm getting errors I do not understand f.e.

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.apache.cxf.common.classloader.ClassLoaderUtils.loadClass

and I have no idea why it's not working while using server runtime for tomcat 6 works fine from eclipse.

Is it possible to instruct Eclipse to perform let say mvn install when I save the class? Will it work than? Will that be quick enough (rebuilding only changed things + dependencies as I'm used to from standard JSE projects)?

Actually I'm using

maven 3.0.4
java 1.6
eclipse 4.2.1 (STS 3.2.0.M2)
tomcat 6 (we are currently developing for Tomcat 6, but I guess it's the same for 7)

edit

some relevant parts from pom.xml

<project ...>
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>...</groupId>
    <artifactId>...</artifactId>
    <version>...</version>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <properties>
        <spring.version>3.1.1.RELEASE</spring.version>
        <!-- WSDL -> Java (start) -->
        <cxf.version>2.7.3</cxf.version>
        <cxf-codegen-plugin.version>2.6.1</cxf-codegen-plugin.version>
        <cxf.sourceRoot>src/main/generated</cxf.sourceRoot>
        <!-- WSDL -> Java (end) -->

        <junit.version>4.11</junit.version>
        <maven.build.timestamp.format>yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm</maven.build.timestamp.format>
        <project.build.date>${maven.build.timestamp}</project.build.date>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        ...
    </dependencies>


    <build>

        <resources>
            <resource>
                <!-- filtering used to replace variables from in property files -->
                <filtering>true</filtering>
                <directory>${basedir}/src/main/java</directory>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>**/*.java</exclude>
                </excludes>
            </resource>

            <resource>
                <filtering>false</filtering>
                <directory>${basedir}/src/main/resources</directory>
            </resource>
        </resources>

        <plugins>
            <!-- add src/main/generated for maven -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>1.7</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>generate-sources</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>add-source</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <sources>
                                <source>src/main/generated</source>
                            </sources>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>

            <!-- WSDL -> Java (start) -->
            <plugin>
                <!-- !!! READ !!! -->
                <!-- mvn cxf-codegen-plugin:wsdl2java NOT working, comment phase and run "mvn clean install -DskipTests") -->
                <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
                <artifactId>cxf-codegen-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>${cxf-codegen-plugin.version}</version>
                <executions>
                    ...
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>

        <pluginManagement>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <version>2.5.1</version>
                    <inherited>true</inherited>
                    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                    <configuration>
                        <source>1.6</source>
                        <target>1.6</target>
                        <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>

                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <version>2.1.1</version>
                    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                    <configuration>
                        <warName>test</warName>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>

                <!-- resources in UTF-8 -->
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>2.5</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>

                <!-- JUnit -->
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>2.8</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <redirectTestOutputToFile>true</redirectTestOutputToFile>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>

                <plugin>
                    <artifactId>maven-eclipse-plugin</artifactId>
                    <configuration>
                        <wtpversion>1.5</wtpversion>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </pluginManagement>
    </build>
</project>

Could you please post your pom? Is the packaging set to war? — guerda
You need the servers view, right click and add server and select Tomcat, then you can deploy your web projects from within Eclipse. That supports hot swap too. — Bob Flannigon
@furtelwart: my actual pom.xml is to big to post it here (a lot of stuff is irrelevant for this question), but answer to your comment is, that I have <packaging>war</packaging> in my pom and also <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId> configured, my problem is not that it's not working, but it's only too complicated... @Bob Flannigon: this is correct, but it takes wrong folder (${project}/target/classes) as I wrote in my question... — Betlista
@Betlista Thanks for the info! Could you edit the relevant parts into the question? The properties for the maven-war-plugin could be relevant. — guerda

Jay Q. Jay Q. · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-04T12:29:17

4

votes

I normally just use m2eclipse Maven plugin and import the project into eclipse.

How to use Tomcat with maven correctly in Eclipse

2 Answers