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Web Application Archives

If you want to distribute a Web application and run it on another server you package it in a Web application archive (WAR), which is a JAR similar to the package used for Java class libraries, and installed (or deployed) into a Web container. In addition to Web components, a Web application archive usually contains other files including:

• Server-side utility classes (database beans, shopping carts, and so on). Often these classes conform to the JavaBeans component architecture.
• Static Web content (HTML, image, and sound files, and so on)
• Client-side classes (applets and utility classes)

Web components and static Web content files are called Web resources.

A WAR has a specific directory structure. The top-level directory of a WAR is the document root of the application. The document root is where JSP pages, client-side classes and archives, and static Web resources are stored.

The document root contains a subdirectory called WEB-INF, which contains the following files and directories:

• web.xml - the Web application deployment descriptor
• Tag library descriptor files (see Tag Library Descriptors (page 471)).
• classes - a directory that contains server-side classes: servlets, utility classes, and JavaBeans components.
• lib - a directory that contains JAR archives of libraries (tag libraries and any utility libraries called by server-side classes).

You can also create application-specific subdirectories (that is, package directories) in either the document root or the WEB-INF/classes directory.

The ant build files distributed with the tutorial examples construct this directory structure in the build subdirectory.

Creating a WAR File

You can manually create a WAR in two ways:

• With the JAR tool distributed with the J2SE SDK. You simply execute the following command in the build directory of a tutorial example:

  jar cvf archiveName.war .
   
  

• With the war task of the ant portable build tool.

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