How to Gradle Spring MVC Web Project

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.