Communication between two web application in same server

Question

All,

I have 2 web applications, Web1 and Web2, deployed on my tomcat server. I want classes in Web1 to call methods on classes in Web2. One way to do this is using webservice. Is there any other way similar to calling a method on class on same web application ?.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes. It is possible. It tried for same servlet container by using getServletContext().getContext() method.

First you need to make changes in below file

(Windows) C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\conf\context.xml Set value of crossContext to true.

context.xml

<Context crossContext="true">

    <!-- Default set of monitored resources -->
    <WatchedResource>WEB-INF/web.xml</WatchedResource>

    <!-- Uncomment this to disable session persistence across Tomcat restarts -->
    <!--
    <Manager pathname="" />
    -->

    <!-- Uncomment this to enable Comet connection tacking (provides events
         on session expiration as well as webapp lifecycle) -->
    <!--
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.CometConnectionManagerValve" />
    -->

</Context>

Please note that crossContext="true".

Suppose you have two web applications with name InterServletComm1 and InterServletComm2 having servlets Servlet1 and Servlet1 in each web application respectively. Then the code in each servlets goes as follows:

Servlet1.java

package interServletComm1;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;

import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

/**
 * Servlet implementation class Servlet1
 */
@WebServlet("/Servlet1")
public class Servlet1 extends HttpServlet {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#HttpServlet()
     */
    public Servlet1() {
        super();
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
     */
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException 
    {
        response.setContentType("text/html");
        PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();

        request.setAttribute("name", "WebApp1");
        ServletContext context = getServletContext().getContext("/InterServletComm2");
        RequestDispatcher rd = context.getRequestDispatcher("/Servlet2");
        rd.forward(request, response);
    }

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
     */
    protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    }

}

Servlet2.java

package interServletComm2;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;

import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

/**
 * Servlet implementation class Servlet2
 */
@WebServlet("/Servlet2")
public class Servlet2 extends HttpServlet {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#HttpServlet()
     */
    public Servlet2() {
        super();
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
     */
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException 
    {
        response.setContentType("text/html");
        PrintWriter pw = response.getWriter();
        String name = (String) request.getAttribute("name");
        pw.println("This is web application 2.");
        pw.println("<br>The value received from web application one is: " + name);
    }

    /**
     * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
     */
    protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    }

}

Above code sends attribute name from InterServletComm1 and it is received in InterServletComm2. Please let me know if this answer is not clear.

Answer 2

Just searched around some articles and the above scenario is certainly possible using CrossContext switching in Tomcat.

Set the following element in context.xml in <Context crossContext="true">

And then getServletContext().getContext("/Web2");.

Haven't tried yet, though.