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Tomcat Deploy Procedures: A Complete Guide to Web Application Deployment With Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat offers users a lot of flexibility when deploying web applications. Tomcat is lightweight, and starts up in seconds, as opposed to the
minutes it takes a stack-based Java EE server to start, so traditional startup deployment is feasible. However, Tomcat also supports a variety of hot
deployment options, allowing users to roll out new applications, or even update existing ones, while the server is still running.

In this guide, we'll explore all the options available to you when deploying an application on your Tomcat server, from a simple startup deployment,
to tools that can automate hot deployment of your application across multiple running Tomcat servers.

Startup Deployment

Also knowns as folder deployment, startup deployment is the easiest way to deploying a web application to your server.

To have Tomcat deploy an application automatically when it starts, simple copy either an uncompressed web application (also known as an
"exploded" application) or a compressed application, or WAR, to the appBase folder specified in your Host configuration.

When Tomcat starts, it will deploy all applications in the appBase, in the following order:

1. Applications defined by Context elements in either "$CATALINA_BASE/conf/server.xml" (discouraged),

"$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[EngineName]/[HostName]/[ApplicationName].xml", "or
$CATALINA_BASE/webapps/[ApplicationName]/META-INF/context.xml"
2. Uncompressed (exploded) applications located in the appBase without Context Descriptors.
3. docBase applications that are compressed in WAR files, along with WARs associated with an existing application, which will be used
to automatically redeploy the application.

To deploy a new application, Tomcat copies its directory structure to the relevant context path in its base webapps folder, creating
directories as needed. If the application provides its own Context.xml, this is copied to
"$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[EngineName]/[HostName]/[ApplicationName].xml", provided this file does not already exist.

Hot Deployment

The big downfall of startup deployment is that it requires a full server restart to make any changes to the application, or deploy new applications,
even if the application doesn't have any elements that would require a restart for it to function.

To remedy this situation, Tomcat provides a number of "hot deployment" options, which simply means that any deployments, redeployments, and
adjustments to applications are made while the server is still running, rather than requiring it to stop.

There are a number of ways to use hot deployment with Tomcat. In this section, we'll go over the most common: Host autoDeploy, the Tomcat
Manager, and the Tomcat Client Deployer.

Host autoDeploy

The most recent versions of Tomcat support a number of hot deployment features right out of the box. These features are enabled on a per-Host
basis, by setting the "autoDeploy" attribute to "true".

Here are some of the things you can do once you've enabled hot deployment:

Automatically deploy exploded or compressed applications by placing them in the appBase

Re-deploy existing applications by copying an updated WAR file into the appBase

Use WatchedResource elements to initiate application re-deploy whenever the defined resource is updated (for example, WEB-INF/web.xml)

For a complete list of autoDeploy-enabled hot deploy features, visit the Apache project website.

Deployment with Tomcat Manager

The Tomcat Manager is a lightweight administrative tool included with all standard distributions of Apache Tomcat, that provides a wide variety of
deployment functionalities, including a number of hot deployment commands.

Manager commands are sent in a standard URI format, as follows:

http://[host]:[port]/manager/[command]?[parameters]
 Using the Manager, you can deploy an application to a running Tomcat server from pretty much anywhere - there are usages for remote
deployment, local path deployment, deployment from WAR, deployment from the appBase, and even deployment by calling a context.xml file that
provides a docBase path.

Manager can also remotely reload, undeploy (careful, this means delete), start, and stop applications.

To make sure that Tomcat is secure out of the box, Manager and its features are disabled by default, and it takes more than a little wrangling to get
it up and running.

For more information about using the Manager application on your server, including a list of commands and some example usages, please check
out our helpful Tomcat Manager Guide.

Deployment with the Tomcat Client Deployer

The Tomcat Client Deployer (TCD) is a multi-component Java package that uses a variety of technologies to validate, compile, compress, and
deploy your web applications. TCD is basically a bundle of Ant tasks that execute functions of the Jasper JSP Engine, JDK, and Catalina engine
(including the Tomcat Manager) to quickly move applications from your hard drive to your running Tomcat server.

TCD is not included with standard distributions of Tomcat. You can download it separately from the Tomcat project site. You can decompress it
anywhere you want; it doesn't need to be in a Tomcat directory. If you haven't installed it already, you'll also need to download and install Apache
Ant in order for TCD to run. Note that a configured, running instance of the Tomcat Manager application is required for TCD to work.

To deploy an application using TCD, you will need to create and edit a file named "deployer.properties", which should be located in the root
directory of the TCD package. This file will look something like this, substituting [values] and {variables}:

build=${build}/webapp/${path}
webapp=[path/to/target/exploded/application]
path=[DesiredContextPath]
url=[http://[host]:[port]/path/to/manager/webapp]
username=[UserWithManagerRole]
password=[TomcatManagerPassword]

Once you have configured this file, run TCD with the included Ant script. The default target, "compile", will validate and compile the web application
as a WAR file at the specified "build" location. Other targets with self-explanatory features include deploy, undeploy, start, reload, and stop.

Other Hot Deployment Scenarios

Aside from the three basic hot deployment methods, there are a few other ways you may want to hot deploy to Tomcat.

In this section, we'll learn how to set up an Integrated Development Environment to hot deploy all changes to your Tomcat server, and look at how
to deal with the complex problem of hot deployment across multiple servers in a production environment.

Hot Deployment to Tomcat with an IDE

Integrated Development Environments can speed up many aspects of Java web application development, including deployment of changes to the
server.

Thanks to Tomcat's native support for hot deployment, getting Tomcat to update applications with your changes as you make them is a deceptively
simple problem. The real hassle isn't getting Tomcat to hot deploy changes - it's getting your IDE talking to Tomcat. Here's a simple step-by-step
guide:

1. Configure your IDE to recognize Tomcat as a server environment. Thanks to Tomcat's popularity, most IDEs offer plug-ins adding Tomcat
support to their environment. For an example of this, check out Tomcat Eclipse, our simple, illustrated guide to using Tomcat in conjunction with
the popular Eclipse IDE.
2. Give your IDE write-access to your application's "WEB-INF/classes" directory.
3. Configure Tomcat to reload classes when they are changed, by setting the "reloadable" attribute to "true" for the relevant Context and Web-App
elements in your Tomcat configuration files.

Note that this is obviously aimed at the development environment, and is unsuitable for production.

Tcat Server: Enterprise-Level Deployment Functionality

In a production environment, the simplicity of Tomcat's deployment functionality can begin to cause problems. It's simply not good enough to be
able to deploy applications to a single server, or make patchwork changes with an Ant script. You need fast, reliable deployment across multiple
servers and clusters, with rich statistics, and a way of quickly recovering from errors in your application.

Mulesoft's Tcat Server delivers enterprise-ready deployment functionality for your Tomcat architecture. Using an intuitive central web console, you
can:
 reliably deploy an application to a server or group of servers with a single click

deploy multiple applications at once using deployment packages

quickly roll back to a previous stable version in case of error

Tcat Server is the Enterprise Tomcat solution you've been looking for. Built on 100% Apache Tomcat, with zero modifications to the core binaries,
Tcat Server is free for you to download and use all the way through pre-production.

Leave your deployment headaches behind - download Tcat Server today!