Are you looking to deploy a WAR (Web Application Archive) file to Jetty? If so, you’ve come to the right place. This article will guide you through the process of deploying a WAR file to Jetty in a step-by-step manner, ensuring that you have a smooth and successful deployment experience.

Jetty is an open-source Java HTTP server and servlet container. It is widely used for hosting Java web applications due to its lightweight and fast performance. Deploying a WAR file to Jetty allows you to easily run your web application on a server and make it accessible to users.

Overview of Jetty

What is Jetty?

Jetty is an open-source HTTP server and servlet container written in Java. It was initially developed by Greg Wilkins in 1995 and is now maintained by the Eclipse Foundation. Jetty is a popular choice for hosting web applications due to its lightweight nature and high performance.

Jetty supports various Java web technologies, including Servlets, JavaServer Pages (JSP), and WebSocket. It also offers a flexible and extensible architecture, making it suitable for a wide range of use cases.

Features of Jetty

Jetty comes with a host of features that make it a preferred choice for developers and organizations alike. Some of the key features of Jetty include:

  • Lightweight: Jetty has a small footprint and is highly optimized, making it one of the most lightweight servlet containers available;
  • High Performance: Jetty is known for its fast performance, making it an ideal choice for high traffic websites and applications;
  • Flexible Architecture: Jetty’s modular architecture allows for easy customization and extension to suit specific needs;
  • Easy Integration: Jetty can be easily integrated with other frameworks and tools such as Maven, Eclipse, and Spring;
  • Built-in Security: Jetty comes with built-in security features, including SSL/TLS support, which ensures secure communication between clients and the server;
  • Scalability: Jetty is designed to be scalable and can handle large volumes of requests efficiently;
  • Open Source: Jetty is an open-source software under the Apache License, making it free to use and modify.

Now that you have an understanding of what Jetty is and its features, let’s move on to the deployment process.

Preparing Your Environment

Before we dive into deploying our WAR file, we need to ensure that our environment is set up correctly. This includes checking system requirements and installing necessary software.

Checking System Requirements

To run Jetty, your system must meet the following minimum requirements:

  • Java 8 or highe;
  • Operating system: Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X;
  • Minimum 50MB of disk space

Ensure that your system meets these requirements before proceeding with the deployment process.

Installing Java and JDK

If you don’t have Java installed on your system, you need to install it before you can deploy your WAR file to Jetty. You can download the latest version of Java from the Oracle website or use a package manager for your operating system.

Additionally, you also need to have JDK (Java Development Kit) installed on your system. JDK includes the necessary tools and libraries for developing Java applications. Make sure that you have JDK version 8 or higher installed. You can check your Java and JDK versions by running the following commands in your terminal:

java -version

javac -version

If you don’t get any output or if the versions are lower than 8, you need to download and install the appropriate versions.

Building Your Web Application

To deploy a WAR file to Jetty, you first need to have a web application built and ready to be packaged. If you already have an existing web application, you can skip this step. Otherwise, follow the steps below to create a simple web application using Eclipse.

Creating a Dynamic Web Project

  1. Open Eclipse and select File > New > Dynamic Web Project. Give your project a name and click Next;
  2. Select the target runtime as Apache Tomcat v9.0 and click Next;
  3. Leave the default settings for the context root and click Next again;
  4. In the next window, add a servlet by clicking New Servlet under the Web Content Directory section. Enter a name for your servlet and click Next;
  5. Finally, click Finish to create your dynamic web project.

Adding Necessary Dependencies and Libraries

Now that we have our project set up, we need to add some dependencies and libraries to our project. These dependencies are required for our web application to run on Jetty.

  1. Right-click on your project in the Project Explorer and click on Properties;
  2. In the properties window, go to Java Build Path > Libraries. Click on Add Library and select Server Runtime;
  3. From the list of available servers, choose Apache Tomcat v9.0 (or whichever version you selected earlier) and click Finish;
  4. Next, we need to add a dependency for the Servlet API. Right-click on your project and go to Properties > Deployment Assembly. Click Add and select Java Build Path Entrie;
  5. In the next window, select the Servlet-api.jar file and click Finish.

Your project now has all the necessary dependencies and libraries to run on Jetty.

Male developer working at the computer

Packaging Your Web Application as a WAR File

Before we can deploy our web application, we need to package it as a WAR file. A WAR file is essentially a compressed archive that contains all the files and resources required to run a web application.

Understanding the Structure of a WAR File

A WAR file follows a specific structure, similar to a Java JAR file. The following table outlines the contents of a typical WAR file:

Folder/FileDescription
/WEB-INF/web.xmlDeployment descriptor file containing information about the web application
/META-INF/MANIFEST.MFContains metadata about the WAR file
/WEB-INF/classes/Classes and packages used by the web application
/WEB-INF/lib/All external libraries and dependencies
Content such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, etc.The actual content of the web application

Using Maven or Manually Packaging the WAR File

There are two ways to package your web application as a WAR file – using Maven or manually creating the WAR file. If you’ve built your project with Maven, all you need to do is run the mvn package command from your terminal. This will create a WAR file in the target folder of your project.

If you’re not using Maven, you can manually package your web application by following these steps:

  1. Right-click on your project and go to Export > Web > WAR File. Select the destination to save the WAR file and click Finish;
  2. Alternatively, you can also use the jar command from your terminal to create a WAR file:

jar cf .war

Your WAR file is now ready to be deployed to Jetty.

Setting Up Jetty Server

Now that our web application is packaged as a WAR file, we need to set up Jetty server to deploy it. Follow the steps below to download, install and configure Jetty for deployment.

Downloading and Installing Jetty

  1. Head over to the Jetty website and download the latest stable version of Jetty;
  2. Extract the downloaded file to a suitable location on your system;
  3. Add the bin directory of the extracted Jetty folder to your system’s PATH variable;
  4. To verify if Jetty is successfully installed, open your terminal and run the java -jar start.jar command. If everything is working correctly, you should see some logs and a message saying Started @xxxms where xxx is the time taken for Jetty to start.

Configuring Jetty for Deployment

Before we can deploy our WAR file, we need to make some changes to the Jetty configuration. This includes setting up a context handler and specifying the path to our web application.

  1. Navigate to the webapps directory inside the Jetty folder;
  2. Create a new XML file with the name of your web application, followed by .xml extension. For example, if your web application is named myapp, the file name should be myapp.xml;
  3. Open the XML file and add the following code:

   /

    /.war 

Replace with the name of your WAR file.

  1. Save the changes and close the file.
Rear view of programmer working all night long

Deploying the WAR File to Jetty

We’ve now reached the final step – deploying our WAR file to Jetty. There are two ways to deploy the WAR file, either using the Jetty Manager App or the Jetty Command Line Interface (CLI).

Deploying Using the Jetty Manager App

Jetty comes with a built-in web application called the Jetty Manager App, which allows you to manage and deploy your web applications easily. To deploy using the Manager App, follow these steps:

  1. Start your Jetty server by running the java -jar start.jar command in your terminal;
  2. Open your web browser and go to http://localhost:8080/manager;
  3. Log in using the default credentials (admin/admin) or any other configured credentials;
  4. Click on the Deploy button under the Deploy War section;
  5. In the next window, click on Choose File and select your WAR file from your local system;
  6. Finally, click Deploy to deploy your WAR file to Jetty.

Deploying Using the Jetty Command Line Interface (CLI)

You can also use the Jetty CLI to deploy your WAR file. Follow these steps to deploy your WAR file using the CLI:

  1. Start your Jetty server by running the java -jar start.jar command in your terminal.
  1. Navigate to the bin directory inside the Jetty folder;
  2. Run the following command to deploy your WAR file:
java -jar ../lib/jetty-runner.jar .war

Replace with the name of your WAR file.

  1. If everything is successful, you should see some logs and a message saying Started ServerConnector@xxx where xxx is the port on which Jetty is listening.

Congratulations! You have now successfully deployed your WAR file to Jetty.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed how to deploy a WAR file to Jetty. We started with an overview of Jetty, including its features, followed by preparing our environment by checking system requirements and installing necessary software. We then moved on to building our web application and packaging it as a WAR file using Maven or manually. Finally, we set up Jetty server and covered two methods for deploying our WAR file – using the Jetty Manager App and the Jetty CLI.

Deploying a WAR file to Jetty is a straightforward process, and with this step-by-step guide, you should be able to do it without any hassle. So go ahead and deploy your web application to Jetty and experience its fast performance and flexibility first-hand.

By Core java