How to deliver properties files in addition to artifacts?

Question

I am using Maven2 to build a WAR project. Some properties files are dependent on the environment targeted for a release.

I want to deliver, in addition of the WAR, a file called datasource.xml. This file already exists in my project directory, but contains properties that will be filtered during the build (i.e. some ${foo.bar}).

In others words, after running the command mvn clean install, I want to see in my target/ directory two files, my-webapp.war and datasource.xml.

Note that datasource.xml must not be included in the my-webapp.war artifact!

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can attach additional artifacts using the build-helper-maven-plugin. The configuration below would attach datasource.xml as an additional artifact during the package phase. If that artifact is defined outside of src/main/resources and src/main/webapp it will not be included in the war.

Update: to ensure resource filtering is applied per your comment, you can specify an execution of the resource-plugin's copy-resources goal, specifying filtering to be applied. You can then still attach that filtered artifact using the build-helper-maven-plugin by referencing the corresponding target directory. I've updated the example below to show this usage.

<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.4</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>copy-resources</id>
      <phase>validate</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>copy-resources</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <outputDirectory>${project.build.outputDirectory}/datasource</outputDirectory>
        <resources>          
          <resource>
            <directory>src/main/datasource</directory>
            <filtering>true</filtering>
          </resource>
        </resources>              
      </configuration>            
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
  <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
  <artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>1.3</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>attach-artifacts</id>
      <phase>package</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>attach-artifact</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <artifacts>
          <artifact>
            <file>${project.build.outputDirectory}/datasource/datasource.xml</file>
            <type>xml </type>
            <classifier>datasource</classifier>
          </artifact>
        </artifacts>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

This won't appear in the target folder, but it will be deployed/installed to the repository alongside the war.

The attached artifact can be referenced by defining a dependency with the classifier "datasource". For example:

<dependency>
  <groupId>my.group.id</groupId>
  <artifactId>my-artifact-id/artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0</version>
  <classifier>datasource</classifier>
  <type>xml</type>
</dependency>

You could use the the dependency plugin's copy goal to retrieve the artifact and put it wherever it is required as part of your deployment process.