Tomcat-JSP-Servlet Development

This project uses containers to provide an example development and testing environment.

• tomcat - a tomcat 10.1.x container, built to include the documentation and examples
• dbs - a MariaDB container, using docker volume, jsp-bookstore-data
• adminer - a database WebUI management
• jsp-net - dedicated docker network

The example Tomcat application is based on tomcat-containers and JSP Servlet JDBC MySQL Create Read Update Delete (CRUD) Example but makes no reference to Eclipse , nor how the code was developed.

The application has been converted to HTML5 and makes use of Pure.CSS downloaded from a CDN to do some simple formatting.

To illustrate static content an Almost background is also used.

The tomcat container listens on port 8480, not the default 8080 to avoid port conflicts.

The Java development was done with IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition.

Maven is installed locally on the development laptop, although it is possible to containerize it, Apache Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool or use the bundled IntelliJ IDEA Maven

The maven plugin org.codehaus.cargo.cargo-maven3-plugin is used to un/deploy the WAR file.

Local Maven Installation

The following applications need installed locally, Docker Desktop and Maven

Setup of the Bookstore Database

To create the Bookstore database andbsapp application account, see MariaDB

The Development Environment

To use the environment and start/stop the Docker containers

PS C:\Users\sjfke> docker create volume jsp-bookstore-data            # MariaDB persistent volume 
PS C:\Users\sjfke> docker compose up -d                               # Start the containers
[+] Running 4/4
 ✔ Network tomcat-jsp-servlet_jsp-net      Created                                                                                                                                                                                               0.1s 
 ✔ Container tomcat-jsp-servlet-adminer-1  Started                                                                                                                                                                                               0.7s 
 ✔ Container tomcat-jsp-servlet-dbs-1      Started                                                                                                                                                                                               0.6s 
 ✔ Container tomcat-jsp-servlet-tomcat-1   Started        
 
PS C:\Users\sjfke> start http://localhost:8480                        # Tomcat; Manager u:admin p:admin
PS C:\Users\sjfke> start http://localhost:8491                        # Adminer u:root, p:r00tpa55
PS C:\Users\sjfke> docker exec -it tomcat-jsp-servlet-dbs-1 /bin/bash # Login to MariaDB container

PS C:\Users\sjfke> docker compose down                                # shutdown the containers

The compose.yaml specifies al the container settings, including the MariaDB password.

To start just the MariaDB and Adminer containers use:

• compose-mariadb.yaml passwords etc. are read from env folder
• compose-mariadb-simple.yaml passwords etc. are hard-coded in theyaml file

The Wharf folder contains README files, covering the detail of the local setup, such as DOCKER, MAVEN, MAVEN_DEPLOYMENT, TOMCAT_MAVEN and MARIADB

Tomcat Setup

To set up Tomcat for development, the contents of the Config folder are used.

This make docs, examples, host-manager and manger available and accessible on the Docker IP subnets.

Two user roles are created, with the password being the same as the account name.

• admin for host-manager and manger
• badmin for the Manager HTML interface

The tomcat-users.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<tomcat-users version="1.0" xmlns="http://tomcat.apache.org/xml" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
              xsi:schemaLocation="http://tomcat.apache.org/xml tomcat-users.xsd">
    <user password="admin" roles="manager-gui,manager-status,admin-gui" username="admin"/>
    <user password="badmin" roles="manager-script,admin-script" username="badmin"/>
</tomcat-users>

Tomcat Maven Dependencies

Tomcat 10 onwards requires the JSP pages use <%@ taglib uri="jakarta.tags.core" prefix="c" %>

There is contradictory advice on the required Maven dependencies, furthermore Tomcat 10.0.x, Tomcat 10.1.x and Tomcat 11.x require difference dependencies.

Warning

Using incorrect maven dependencies often results in java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/jsp/tagext/TagLibraryValidator errors.

Tomcat Maven Dependencies provides the correct dependencies for each version of Tomcat

Maven Deployment to Tomcat container

Two approaches are described

• Tomcat Manager HTML interface
• Maven 3 Cargo Plugin

But it is the maven-3-cargo-plugin that is used.

Build and Deploy example Bookstore application to the Tomcat container using Maven

Tomcat 10 onwards requires the JSP pages use <%@ taglib uri="jakarta.tags.core" prefix="c" %>

Using an incorrect maven dependencies often results in java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/jsp/tagext/TagLibraryValidator errors.

There is contradictory advice on how to set up this properly, and furthermore Tomcat 10.0.x, Tomcat 10.1.x and Tomcat 11.x require difference dependencies, so read Tomcat Maven Dependencies to avoid many wasted hours.

To build the Bookstore-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war file from the command line

PS C:\Users\sjfke> mvn clean package   # create war file
PS C:\Users\sjfke> mvn cargo:undeploy  # remove bookstore application on tomcat container
PS C:\Users\sjfke> mvn cargo:deploy    # deploy bookstore application on tomcat container

To view the bookstore web application for the fist time.

PS C:\Users\sjfke> start http://localhost:8480/bookstore/

Future Updates

This project is an early stage of development and is restricted to:

• Windows 11 (home) but Linux approach is planned
• docker and docker compose, although a podman approach is planned
• maven, although a gradle is planned.