Apache Tomcat plugin

This topic describes how the Deploy Apache Tomcat plugin is used to manage deployments on a Tomcat server.

Standard support includes deploying and undeploying web applications, datasources, mail sessions, resource links, ActiveMQ, and WebSphere MQ resources. The plugin can be extended to support more deployment options or management of new artifacts and resources on Tomcat.

For information about Tomcat requirements and the configuration items (CIs) it supports, see the Tomcat Plugin Manual.

Features

• Deploy web applications (WAR) to a Tomcat virtual host.
• Deploy resources to an application context on a Tomcat virtual host.
• Deploy resources to the common Tomcat context ( $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/context.xml).
• Deploy resource links.
• Supported JEE resources:
  • Datasource
  • JMS Queue
  • JMS Queue Connection Factory
  • JMS Topic
  • JMS Topic Connection Factory
  • Mail Session
• Supported Messaging Middleware:
  • ActiveMQ (currently supported version is ActiveMQ Artemis 2.15.0)
  • WebSphere MQ
• Support for Tomcat Database Connection Pool (DBCP) configurations.
• Support for stopping and starting a Tomcat server via control tasks.
• Deploy configuration files to a Tomcat server.
• Deploy libraries files to a Tomcat server.

Tomcat topology

The Tomcat plugin facilitates the modeling of a Tomcat installation into the Deploy infrastructure as a hierarchical set of containers. The Tomcat server (tomcat.Server), Tomcat common context (tomcat.CommonContext), and Tomcat virtual host (tomcat.VirtualHost) containers can be included in Deploy environment definitions, where you can deploy deployables.

Tomcat server (tomcat.Server)

tomcat.Server models a Tomcat installation running on a host. This container must be defined under any overthere.Host in the Deploy infrastructure. The container supports operating system-specific stop and start commands used to control the stopping and starting of the Tomcat server. In addition, stop and start wait times can be specified. Deploy will wait for the specified amount of time to elapse after the execution of a stop/start command.

Tomcat common context (tomcat.CommonContext)

tomcat.CommonContext models the context.xml file present in the $TOMCAT_HOME/conf directory. This container must be defined under a tomcat.Server container. Only a single instance should be defined. Any Tomcat resource can be deployed to this container.

Tomcat virtual host (tomcat.VirtualHost)

tomcat.VirtualHost models a Tomcat virtual host definition ($TOMCAT_HOME/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]). This container must be defined under a tomcat.Server container. Multiple instances can be defined. Web applications and tomcat resources can be deployed to this container.

Deploying web applications

Web applications (jee.War) can be deployed to a Tomcat virtual host (tomcat.VirtualHost). The context root must be specified. The context root is used to create the corresponding application specific context XML in the virtual host. If you want to deploy the WAR file in the exploded mode, you must package the WAR file using tomcat.ExplodedWar instead of jee.War.

Deploying resources

A Tomcat resource (tomcat.JndiContextElement) can be deployed to a Tomcat virtual host (tomcat.VirtualHost) or Tomcat common context (tomcat.CommonContext). Every resource has an optional context property. This property is always set to context when the resource is deployed to Tomcat common context. When the resource is deployed to a Tomcat virtual host, the user can specify the name of the context to which the resource must be defined.

When left blank, the plugin can default the value to that of the WAR in the current deployment. There must only be a single WAR in the current deployment for the defaulting to work. Example: Deploying a WAR with context root set to sample, and a datasource to a virtual host will automatically result in the context property of the datasource been set to sample.

Use in deployment packages

The plugin works with the standard deployment package of DAR format.

The following is a sample deployit-manifest.xml file that can be used to create a Tomcat specific deployment package. It contains declarations for a WAR (jee.War), a datasource (tomcat.DataSourceSpec), and other JMS resources.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<udm.DeploymentPackage version="1.0" application="SampleApp">
  <deployables>
    <jee.War name="SampleApp-1.0.war" file="SampleApp-1.0.war">
      <tags />
      <scanPlaceholders>true</scanPlaceholders>
      <checksum>b4759ef62eaf3a89db260f51ad0d1d749d22f7e4</checksum>
    </jee.War>
    <tomcat.DataSourceSpec name="testDatasource">
      <tags />
      <jndiName>jdbc/sampleDatasource</jndiName>
      <driverClassName>com.mysql.jdbc.Driver</driverClassName>
      <url>jdbc:mysql://localhost/test</url>
      <username>{{DATABASE_USERNAME}}</username>
      <password>{{DATABASE_PASSWORD}}</password>
      <connectionProperties />
    </tomcat.DataSourceSpec>
    <jee.QueueSpec name="sampleQueue">
      <tags />
      <jndiName>jms/testQueue</jndiName>
    </jee.QueueSpec>
    <jee.QueueConnectionFactorySpec name="sampleQCf">
      <tags />
      <jndiName>jms/sampleQCf</jndiName>
    </jee.QueueConnectionFactorySpec>
  </deployables>
</udm.DeploymentPackage>