Gradle War Configuration for Eclipse Spring Web Application Project

The article describes the configuration one would need to create WAR file for an Eclipse-base web application (Dynamic Web) project.

Below code represents whats needed to compile your Java Eclipse-based web application project and create WAR file which can be deployed later, on any Java server such as Tomcat. Pay attention to some of the following facts:

• repositories: “repositories” is referred in a local directory rather than external repository such as MavenCentral etc.
• sourceSets: sourceSets define the path under which Java source code exists. It MUST BE NOTED that failing to define this would have Gradle look into Maven-based folder such as “src/main/java” for source code that would eventually result into failure. This primarily because Eclipse-based dynamic web projects place the Java code under “src” folder. 
• dependencies: Compile time dependencies is referred from within local directory.
• war: Following are key war-related configurations:
  • WebInf is used to store files within WebContent/WEB-INF folder
  • classpath is used to copy libraries within WebContent/WEB-INF/lib folder
  • WebXML is used to locate path to web.xml (WebContent/WEB-INF/web.xml)
  • from { path } is used to copy files under WebContent folder. These are files such as static resources, html/jsp files if any.

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

// Depending upon the fact that one uses default
// WebContent folder to store web resources. Change
// name to name of WebContent folder appropriately.
def webInfPath = "WebContent/WEB-INF"

// Repositories accessed from local directory
repositories {
flatDir { dirs webInfPath + "/" + "lib" }
}

// Source folder defined as Eclipse stores Java source code
// in non-maven based folder structure
sourceSets {
main {
java { srcDir 'src' }
}
}

dependencies {
// Compile time dependencies read from local directory
compile fileTree(dir: webInfPath + "/" + "lib", include: '*.jar')
}

war {
webInf { from webInfPath} // adds a file-set to the WEB-INF dir.
classpath fileTree(webInfPath + "/" + "lib") // adds a file-set to the WEB-INF/lib dir.
webXml = file(webInfPath + "/" + "web.xml") // copies a file to WEB-INF/web.xml
from('WebContent') { include ('bootstrap/css/*.css', 'bootstrap/js/*.js', 'bootstrap/img/*.*') } //Copy Bootstrap folder to WEB-INF level
}

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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. For latest updates and blogs, follow us on Twitter. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin.
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