Possible to run two webapps at once when developing with Maven/Eclipse?

Question

Here's the problem: we build webapps for clients. We also have an "admin" webapp that modifies some client data structures. Because of the nature of the data, both webapps have to run in the same JVM.

This is no problem in production; you just put two webapps in the same app server.

We've recently switched to a Mavenish way of laying out webapps, though, and Maven wants one webapp per project. In Eclipse it's a problem, because if you run the different webapps independently, they'll be in separate JVMs.

We're trying to use the jetty-maven-plugin to do webapp testing, but could switch to something else if it would solve this problem.

Answer 1

Yes, you can :) It's done by identifying one WAR module as the primary, copying all the other WARs into the primary's target dir, making a jetty.xml and telling Maven Jetty Plugin to use the jetty.xml. Here's how to copy the other WARs using Maven dependency plugin:

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
    <execution>
        <id>copy</id>
        <phase>package</phase>
        <goals>
            <goal>copy</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
            <artifactItems>
                <artifactItem>
                    <groupId>com.foo</groupId>
                    <artifactId>bar</artifactId>
                    <version>${project.version}</version>
                    <type>war</type>
                    <overWrite>true</overWrite>
                    <outputDirectory>target/</outputDirectory>
                </artifactItem>
            </artifactItems>
        </configuration>
    </execution>
</executions>

You'll need to have the com.foo:bar dependency defined in the POM as well. Here's the contents of jetty.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<!-- =========================================================== -->
<!-- Set handler Collection Structure                            -->
<!-- =========================================================== -->
<Set name="handler">
    <New id="Handlers" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.HandlerCollection">
        <Set name="handlers">
            <Array type="org.eclipse.jetty.server.Handler">
                <Item>
                    <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection"
                         id="Contexts">
                        <Set name="handlers">
                            <Array type="org.eclipse.jetty.server.Handler">
                                <Item>
                                    <New id="FooWebHandler"
                                         class="org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext"/>
                                </Item>
                            </Array>
                        </Set>
                    </New>
                </Item>
            </Array>
        </Set>
    </New>
</Set>

<Ref id="FooWebHandler">
    <Set name="contextPath">/foo</Set>
    <Set name="war">
        target/bar-${project.version}.war
    </Set>
</Ref>

And here's how to tell Maven Jetty plugin to use the new jetty.xml:

<plugin>
<groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
<artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${jetty.version}</version>
<configuration>
    <jettyConfig>${basedir}/jetty.xml</jettyConfig>
</configuration>

Now kick off jetty:run-war goal from Eclipse and you should see all WARs deploying in one Maven Jetty plugin instance. I run this from command line and it works there, YMMV with Eclipse.

Answer 2

You can do this via the jetty-maven-plugin directly, without modifying jetty.xml:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.eclipse.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <scanIntervalSeconds>5</scanIntervalSeconds>
        <webApp>
            <contextPath>/</contextPath>
        </webApp>
       <contextHandlers>
          <contextHandler implementation="org.eclipse.jetty.maven.plugin.JettyWebAppContext">
            <war>${project.basedir}/../secondProject.war</war>
            <contextPath>/cc</contextPath>
          </contextHandler>
        </contextHandlers>  
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        ...
    </executions>
</plugin>

You don't have to modify jetty.xml file(s) at all to use this successfully, and you don't need to copy the war file either. (although you may wish to build the second war as part of this build, see maven-invoker-plugin)

Documentation here: http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/documentation/9.2.2.v20140723/jetty-maven-plugin.html#running-more-than-one-webapp