How to Gradle Spring MVC Web Project

The article describes steps that are required to build the a Spring MVC web application project using Gradle tool.

Step 1: Web Application Folder

Make sure you have maven-based web application folder. We recommend you to check our article published on different possible layouts of web application folders. As a recap, following is how the web application folder structure would look like:

  • src/main/java (Consists of Java files)
  • src/main/resources
  • src/main/scripts
  • src/main/webapps: This would further have following folder structure:
    • assets (publicly accessible files)
      • css
      • js
      • images
    • META-INF
    • WEB-INF
      • lib (spring/hibernate & other libraries)
      • views (jsp files)
    • hibernate.cfg.xml (if hibernate is used as well)
    • spring-servlet.xml
    • web.xml

 

Step 2: Create a Gradle Script

Create a gradle script in the root folder. Name it as build.gradle. Following is how the gradle script would look like:

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'war'

repositories {
    flatDir { dirs "src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib" }
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {        
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-webmvc:4.0.3.RELEASE'
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-core:4.0.3.RELEASE'
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-aop:4.0.3.RELEASE'       
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-web:4.0.3.RELEASE'       
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-beans:4.0.3.RELEASE'  
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-context:4.0.3.RELEASE'  
        compile 'org.springframework:spring-tx:4.0.3.RELEASE'  
        compile 'org.hibernate:hibernate-core:4.3.5.FINAL'  
        compile 'org.hibernate:hibernate-jpa:2.1-api-1.0.0.FINAL'          
}

war {    
    webInf { from 'src/main/webapp/WEB-INF'} // adds a file-set to the WEB-INF dir.    
    classpath fileTree('src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib') // adds a file-set to the WEB-INF/lib dir.
    webXml = file('src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml') // copies a file to WEB-INF/web.xml        
    from('src/main/webapp') { include ('bootstrap/css/*.css', 'bootstrap/js/*.js', 'bootstrap/img/*.*')  }
}

task deploy (dependsOn: war){
copy {
    from "build/libs"
    into "D:/Apache Software Foundation/Tomcat 8.0/webapps"
    include "*.war"
}
}

 

Step 3: Build using Gradle

Last step is to build the web application. Go to root folder of web application. Execute the command “gradle war” to build. Optionally, execute “gradle deploy” and the web application will be built and the war file will be deployed in tomcat webapps folder.

Ajitesh Kumar

Ajitesh Kumar

I have been recently working in the area of Data analytics including Data Science and Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I am also passionate about different technologies including programming languages such as Java/JEE, Javascript, Python, R, Julia, etc, and technologies such as Blockchain, mobile computing, cloud-native technologies, application security, cloud computing platforms, big data, etc. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin. Check out my latest book titled as First Principles Thinking: Building winning products using first principles thinking.
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