How to combine Yeoman scaffolding with existing Java directory structure

Question

In my existing web project the directory structure for the served html content while development with jetty is "myProject/src/main/webapp/"

Now, I want to integrate an angularjs project here. I've played a little bit with Yeoman.

If I'm scaffolding with yeoman, I'm wondering how I can integrate it into our existing dev and deployment structure. I suppose to use the main folder "myProject" to run yeoman scaffolding would be fine. Then I would get a "myProject/app/" diretory for all my frontend stuff. Should I instruct somehow (how?) my jetty server to use ".../src/main/webapp/" as an alias for the new app directory?

We use jetty mainly as a proxy for requesting the backend. Is there also a way to do a live reload similar to "yeoman server" in combination with jetty?

Answer 1

Take a look at my answer on how to do Django-Yeoman integration.
Architectural concepts will be the same, even external articles (definitely must-reads) are Java-based.

In short:

• Use yeoman-maven-plugin. If you are on Gradle that's still ok. Even better, since you will have better control over which grunt tasks are being invoked.

• Your project structure should resemble this:

  pom.xml
  
  src/
      main/
          java/
              ...
          resources/
              ...
          webapp/
              WEB-INF/
  yo/
      dist/
      <<the rest of the Yeoman-generated stuff>>
  

• Yeoman generators, including the one initialising the frontend part, should be invoked exclusively from yo directory.

• The plugin takes care for copying production-ready yo/dist to WEB-INF.
  All you have to do is to serve the latter as a static resource.
  Config for Spring MVC (dispatcher servlet):

  <!--Yeoman static content-->
  <mvc:resources location="WEB-INF/yo/" mapping="/**"/>
  

  One should aim for similar config when using other technologies, like Jetty, or pure Servlet config.

The rest, particularly dev setup, is described in referenced answer.