Java, Tomcat, and Eclipse for Web Development - Part IV
Copyright © 2005
Yaodong Bi
Develop Java Web Applications using Eclipse
This section of the
tutorial provides a sample Tomcat project as a jumpstart. The
project is located at a CVS repository and the students in my
CMPS 341 will be able to download this project to
your Eclipse.
1. CVS
CVS, Concurrent Versions System , is a
version control system in the public domain. Using CVS, you can record
the history of your source files and/or documents. With Eclipse, in
addition to version control, you can also use CVS as a
common repository for all members of your team.
With CVS, members of your team can share the same copy of source code
files stored at the CVS repository. After making modifications on the
copy on your local machine, you can commit all the changes to the
repository. The other members of your team can go to the repository to
check out the most recently updated version of the source and then make
changes on their local machines, and then commit all the changes back
to the repository for you and other members of the team to access.
The repositories for our CMPS 341 team projects are on heineken.cs.uofs.edu. This computer has FreeBSD 5.X and CVS installed. On this computer, an account
has been created for everyone and your user name and
password will be given in class. Also created are two Unix user groups
, one for each team and all the members of a team are assigned to
the same group. An repository has been created for each team and it is
readable and writeable to all members of the group.
After setting the CVS and repositories, I put a sample project into your team's repository for you to download.
more coming......
2. A Sample Project -- University Information System
The University Information System, UOFSIS, is
designed for a fictional university. There is a slide
presentation in Powerpoint on its design and implementation. Click here to
download or view it. It is recommended you use Internet
Explore if you want to read it online.
3. Download the Sample Project
This section of the tutorial only covers how to download, or check out
in CVS's term, the sample project. It does not show how to
use CVS for teamed software development.
Start Eclipse, and then go to File->New->Project. The following screen shows up. Click Checkout Projects from CVS. If it is not displayed, click the + sign before CVS to expand it. Click Next.
The following dialog box should show up. If this is first time you use
CVS on your local machine, you will find the middle window display is
empty and there is no ":extssh:..." displayed. Select the Create a new repository location radio button, and then click Next.
The following screen is displayed and here you need to enter all the needed information about the repository. The Host is the domain name of the computer where the CVS repository is located. In our case, it is heineken.cs.uofs.edu. The Repository Path specifies the directory of the repository, which, in our case, is /home/cs341grp#/cvsroot (different from what is shown below), replacing # with your team number. Enter your User name and Password as the instructor told you in class. For Connection type: click the pull-down menu triangle on the right and select extssh. Make sure Use Default Port is selected. Now click Next .
If all the information of the CVS repository was entered correctly, the
following screen/dialog box should be shown. If you know the project
name, or module, you may select Use specified module name: and enter the name. You may also select Use an existing module (this will ....) to display all the modules in the repository, as shownn below. For this tutorial, select UofsisWeb (different from what shown below), the sample project, then click Next .
The following dialog box asks you what the module or project is to
be checked out as. For this tutorial, you should choose the selection
as shown in the screen below. You should keep the same project name, MyWeb, since the source code files, build.xml and build.properties, which you will see later, depend on this project name. You could click Finish
to start the download, but I chose to go
through the last two steps to show what options are
available. So click Next.
This dialog box asks where you want to store the module. In most cases,
the default location is where you want to store it. Click Next.
This dialog box allows you to choose which version or branch of the
module you want to download. Here we choose HEAD to download the latest
version. We will discuss versions and branches shortly. Click Finish.
After clicking Finish in the previous dialogbox, you should
see a progress bar indicating the progress of the download. After it is
completed, the Eclipse workspace should display the downloaded module, MyWeb, in the Package Explorer display pane as shown below. Click the + sign before MyWeb to expand the project folder.
The expanded folder display is shown below. Depending the default Web browser you choose, the three HTML files may be prefixed with different icons. You may have noticed that there is a tiny red square with X in it right by the project name. That symbol indicates that there is an error(s) in the project and the Problem
tab on the right bottom of the window displays a description of
the error(s). For this tutorial the error is the project needs a
folder named work. which is to be used by Tomcat to store the
Java servlet files compiled from JSP files. Since files in the
folder are produced by another program, Tomcat, in this case, this
folder is normally not stored in the CVS repository.
What you need to do here is to right click the project name, MyWeb, then choose New->Folder. Make sure you do not select Source folder from New.
The following dialog box shows and it allows to enter a folder name. Enter work and make sure Enter or select the parent folder has MyWeb entered. Then click Finish .
After the new folder is created, it should show in the project folder
and also the red square with X should have disappeared as shown below.
Before you can build and deploy this sample application, you need to
configure Ant, a Java-based build tool, much like the Make utility in
the Unix world. The configuration is sstore in two separate files. One
file is called build.properties and the other is build.xml, both files are stored in the root folder of the project. The build.xml
included in the sample project can be kept as it is for most Web
applications. It, like Makefile in Make, contains info on where the
source files can gbe found and where compiled .class files should
stored, and if deployment what files and where the files should be
copied to. If you add any .html files or .java files, they will be processed automatically and the modified files will be included in the new deployment.
What you need to change is the build.properties file. Find build.xml file in the Package Explorer and then right click and then, from the popup menu, select Open with->Text editor, as show below:
When the file is displayed as shown below, change the MANAGER_NAME and
PASSWORD to what you entered for Tomcat manager when Tomcat was set up.
Now it is ready for you to build and deploy your first Web project. Find build.xml file in the Package Explorer and then right click it and then from the pop-up menu select Open with->Ant editor or select Open with->Text editor. Now the contents of build.xml should be displayed in the editing pane as shown below.
It is time for you to build and deploy the application. Click the block
triangle next to the button with a green circle and briefcase and from
the pop-up menu select Run As->2 Ant Build .... The following dialog box should display. Select deploy and usage from the list. It is not necessary to select usage to build and deploy the application, but it asks Ant to show all available build options.
The build result should be displayed in the right bottom pane of Console tab as shown below. If it was successful, you should see messages like "Copy # files to C\Program Files\....". and "BUILD SUCCESSFUL".
Now first check whether your Tomcat is up running. If not, start it.
Then start a Web browser, like IE, and enter:
http://localhost:8081/
The following window should display. Click Tomcat Manager in the left column and then enter your manager's user id and password to log in as a manager of your Tomcat.
After logging in as a manager, the following page should display and your project, MyWeb, should be displayed in the Path colummn as shown below. Now click MyWeb.
Now it shows what files are available in the MyWeb application for Web users to access.
You did not need to log in as a manager to come to this page. You could have simply entered http://localhost:8081/MyWeb/ to have this page displayed. Click RegistrarFRM.htm to start the UOFSIS application.
The following should display. Depending on the Web browser you use, the
format may be different. For example, with certain browsers, text and
input boxes may not centered as shown here.
Select Get Course List button in the center to display all
courses in the UOFSIS database which is under PostgreSQL on
server8.cs.uofs.edu. If you see the following displayed table, your
imported sample project is working as it supposed to. Congratulations.
Now you can explore the folders and html and java files in the MyWeb folder in Eclipse to try to understand the sample project.
Another tutorial will be coming soon to explain the sample project and folder layout in general for Web application. Be patient!
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