Tech Juice

Introduction

Serious Java Web application development requires a lot of different applications. In addition to a JDK, an IDE and an application server you may need a Web application framework, a build system and some form of version control. Unsurprisingly, getting set up for development can be quite the task.

In this post we’ll take a look at setting up a Web application project from start to finish. The software we will use is:

What Are We Building?

Different applications come in different forms.

• A Windows application written in C++ may be compiled to a .exe file.
• Runnable Java GUI applications often come in a JAR (Java ARchive).
• Java Web applications are packaged in WAR and EAR files.

We are building a Web application, so the product of building our project will be a WAR file. The Glassfish application server extracts a WAR file and runs the application inside it. The WAR file also contains a deployment descriptor, web.xml that describes how the application server should run the WAR.

The structure of a WAR file looks like this (source):

Project Setup with Maven Archetypes

Now that we know what we are building, it is time to start setting up the project. The directory/file structure…