How to use both http server and application server in a java web application

Question

I have some deployment model question for a Java EE web application. Currently we are deploying our web application as a WAR file in Tomcat 6. All the content is packaged with the WAR file including the static content like images, static html pages and so on. But i want to deploy these static content in a HTTP server and use the Application server only for retrieving the dynamic content. How do i split these things? Does any one has done any thing of this sort and have a good deployment model for my scenario. Help will be appreciated.

Is it a good idea to make 2 WAR files one with only static content and deploy that WAR in HTTP server and the rest as a different WAR file and deploy it in the Application server? But this approach will have impact on all the pages where the static content is currently referred and requires code changes which is very cumbersome since our project is Huge and the code based is very very big.

Any strategy and ideas are welcome.

Answer 1

This can be something interesting to do for performance reasons.

You should have separate deployment scripts / deployment files to do this. Having multiple file/WAR/folder/scripts to deploy for one project is not an issue. We have the same thing when you have to deploy your WAR and to update your database.

I would have a WAR file and a folder with your static content to deploy.

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Edit

Deploying the static content in a HTTP server depends on the server. If you want to use Apache on a Linux server, you have to set up a Virtual Host.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  # This first-listed virtual host is also the default for *:80
  ServerName www.example.com
  DocumentRoot /www/domain
</VirtualHost>

In this example, you have the a virtual host that listens on 80 port, for any IP address and for the server name www.example.com. Then this is redirected to the /www/domain path.

You will find much more examples and configuration options in the documentation.