Helper class to simplify starting an embedded Tomcat in a development environment for a Maven webapplication project.

Add this dependency to your project.

    <dependency>
        <groupId>ch.rasc</groupId>
        <artifactId>embeddedtc</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

and start the embedded Tomcat with ch.rasc.embeddedtc.EmbeddedTomcat.
This starts a Tomcat on port 8080 with a context path "/" and a context directory that points to current_dir + /src/main/webapp

If you need more control create a class in your project (e.g. StartTomcat) and create an instance of EmbeddedTomcat, call the configure methods and start it with startAndWait()

public class StartTomcat {
    public static void main(String[] args) throwsException {
        EmbeddedTomcat etc = new EmbeddedTomcat(9999);
        etc.setContextDirectory("/home/mywebapp");
        etc.setTempDirectoryName("tmp");
        etc.addContextEnvironmentString("key", "value");
        etc.startAndWait();
    }
}

or with method chaining

 public class StartTomcat {
    public static void main(String[] args) throwsException {
        EmbeddedTomcat.create()
                      .setPort(9999)
                      .setContextDirector("/home/mywebapp")
                      .setTempDirectoryName("tmp")
                      .addContextEnvironmentString("key", "value")
                      .startAndWait();
    }
}

CHANGELOG

1.0 July 11, 2012

• Moved to a new package ch.ralscha -> ch.rasc
• Updated to Tomcat 7.0.29

0.0.9 June 21, 2012

• Updated to Tomcat 7.0.28

0.0.8 May 21, 2012

• Updated ecj to 3.7.2
• Fix bug in installSlf4jBridge. install() does not have a parameter

0.0.7 April 17, 2012

• Removed addInitializer(..) method.
  Directory WEB-INF/classes is now mapped to ./target/classes and therefore all the Servlet 3.0 Annotations and ServletContainerInitializer are now working out of the box.

0.0.6 March 9, 2012

• Updated to Tomcat 7.0.27

0.0.5 March 9, 2012

• Bugfix: Make class ContextConfig public. Digester cannot access class if it has package visibility
• All config methods now return the EmbeddedTomcat instance to enable method chaining
• Changed parameters to final

0.0.4 March 2, 2012

• Add a new method addContextEnvironmentAndResourceFromFile(File f) Reads ContextEnvironment and Contextresource from a file and adds it to the embedded Tomcat
• Changed the way resource jars are loaded. In older version the ZipFile was closed after starting Tomcat and was no longer able to read content from the jar file.
  
• Moved default temporary directory to the projects target directory
• TomcatTest: Now deletes temp directory before starting Tomcat

0.0.3 February 26, 2012

• The start() method no longer blocks after starting Tomcat
• Added a new method startAndWait() that blocks the program after starting Tomcat
  
• Added setSilent(boolean) method. If set to true it disables output messages.
• Added new constructor EmbeddedTomcat(String contextPath). Creates Tomcat with specified context path and port 8080
  

0.0.2 February 25, 2012

• Convert exceptions to RuntimeException
• Starts by default a shutdown listener on the shutdown port (port + 1000)
• Before starting a new Tomcat it tries to stop a previous one by sending a command to the shutdown port.

0.0.1 February 24, 2012

• Initial version