Jetty/Howto/Use Jetty with Ant

Introduction

A new plugin is available in the /extras/ant location, which makes it possible to start a Jetty web server directly from the Ant build script, and, to embed the Jetty web server inside your build process. Its purpose is to provide almost the same functionality as the Jetty plugin for Maven: dynamic application reloading, working directly on web application sources, and a tight integration with the build system.

For impatient folks, there is already a demo provided in jetty-contrib repository for the Ant Jetty plugin. It's good to compile Jetty before running these tests, because the demo depends on Jetty JARs from the Maven repository. Alternatively, you can download these JARs manually from one of the Maven repositories. Please see build.xml file in jetty-ant-demo folder for a list of required JARs.

Modifying build.xml from jetty-ant-demo is also the easiest way to start playing with this plugin.

Beginning To Use Ant

The Ant plugin depends on Jetty JARs, and so far it's necessary to build Jetty and then the Ant plugin directly from sources. Here's how it goes:

1. Get the latest jetty sources from http://dist.codehaus.org/jetty/
2. Unpack jetty and build it with 'mvn install' (If you don't have Maven yet, get it from http://maven.apache.org/)
3. Go to the extras/ant/ folder and build ant plugin with 'mvn install'
4. Go to <your M2 repo root>/repository/org/eclipse/jetty/jetty-ant and grab the jetty-ant plugin JAR.
5. Get these files to run Jetty with JSP/Servlets support (find these in <your M2 repo root>/repository/org/eclipse/jetty):
   • jetty.jar
   • jetty-util.jar
   • jetty-plus.jar
   • jetty-naming.jar
   • servlet-api-2.5.jar
   • jsp-api-2.1.jar
   • jsp-2.1.jar
   • and core-3.1.1.jar from <M2 repository>/org/eclipse/jdt/core/3.1.1/
6. Put all the JARs inside one lib directory (let's say jetty-lib).

Preparing the build.xml file

Let's start with an empty build.xml

<project name="Jetty-Ant integration test" basedir=".">
</project>

Then, you must define a jetty task: 

<project name="Jetty-Ant integration test" basedir=".">
  <path id="jetty.plugin.classpath">
     <fileset dir="jetty-lib" includes="*.jar"/>
  </path>
  <taskdef classpathref="jetty.plugin.classpath" resource="tasks.properties" loaderref="jetty.loader" />
</project>

Now, we are ready to add a new target with Jetty container declaration:

<project name="Jetty-Ant integration test" basedir=".">
  <path id="jetty.plugin.classpath">
    <fileset dir="jetty-lib" includes="*.jar"/>
  </path>
  <taskdef classpathref="jetty.plugin.classpath" resource="tasks.properties" loaderref="jetty.loader" />
 
  <target name="jetty.run">
    <jetty />
  </target>
</project>

Starting jetty on port 8080 is then a simple matter of executing ant jetty.run from the command line.

Deploying web applications

Adding web applications to the Jetty web server is now a simple matter of putting extra webapp tags inside jetty tag. Notice, that a tempDirectory attribute has been added to the jetty task to specify where temporary files are stored.

 
<project name="Jetty-Ant integration test" basedir=".">
  <path id="jetty.plugin.classpath">
    <fileset dir="jetty-lib" includes="*.jar"/>
  </path>
  <taskdef classpathref="jetty.plugin.classpath" resource="tasks.properties" loaderref="jetty.loader" />
 
  <target name="jetty.run">
    <jetty tempDirectory="jetty-temp">
      <webApp name="webapp1" warfile="webapp1.war" contextpath="/webapp1" />
    </jetty>
  </target>
</project>

You can put many webapp tags inside jetty tag, thus deploying many web applications simultaneously.

Plugin syntax

There are many ways to configure jetty task:

• tempDirectory - specifies the Jetty temporary web directory:

<jetty tempDirectory="jetty-temp" />