Introduction
In previous tutorials, projects were developed using maven archetypes, plug-ins, etc. Now, with templates, Maven Web Application can be created using the Webapp plug-in. The present chapter explains about webapp plug-in and how to create a sample Maven Web Application.
Description
Normally, J2EE applications have WEB-INF folder, which consists of
Maven Archetype Webapp plug-in creates the default file structure for the application.
web.xml. web.xml files are called as Deployment Descriptor files that are used for servlets configurations as web.xml helps in:- Taking the requests from the clients and validating the requests before reaching the server.
- Validating the response of server and pass them to the client.
Step-1
Open the command prompt and create a folder where the project has to be saved. Now, copy the below command in command prompt under the created folder as shown.
By creating the required files for building an application, following output appears.
By this, Maven also creates a web application structure with the application name WebApplication. The project structure in eclipse is as follows:
mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.sample.webproject -DartifactId=WebApplication -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp -DinteractiveMode=false
Step-2
Check for
pom.xml and index.jsp file that has the following codes by default.
pom.xml
[xml]
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.sample.webproject</groupId>
<artifactId>WebApplication</artifactId>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>WebApplication Maven Webapp</name>
<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>3.8.1</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<finalName>WebApplication</finalName>
</build>
</project>
[/xml]
index.jsp
[c]
<html>
<body>
<h2>Hello World!</h2>
</body>
</html>
[/c]
Step-3
Again open the command prompt, go to the root folder, enter the 
The following output appears.
mvn clean package command and click enter to compile, test and create the WAR file for the project.
Step-4
One can view the WebApplication.war in target folder. Now, deploy that war file into the server. The following output appears that shows that the application has been created successfully.
Key Points
- Webapp plug-in is required to generate the web applications in Maven.
- Web application is build using the mvn clean package command.
Programming
Tips
Make sure to deploy the generated war file into the server target folder.