Myeclipse Tomcat Server Tutorial

8/6/2019 Myeclipse Tomcat Server Tutorial

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Deploying & Running Enterprise Applications > Getting Started

MyEclipse Tomcat ServerTutorialTable of Contents

1. Introduction2. Suggested Audience3. System Requirements4. Getting Started5. Creating a Web Project6. Deploying a Web Project7. Running the Web Project8. Debugging the Web Project9. Conclusion10.Resources11.Feedback

1. Introduction

Welcome to the MyEclipse Tomcat 6 Server Tutorial. Within MyEclipse an embedded

Tomcat 6 server is included to help developers get up and running immediately withtheir development work and not need to scour the net for an application server toinstall, download it, install it and configure it. Instead, with MyEclipse you'll be ableto immediately deploy your web project, run and debug it with no additional

configuration.

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2. Suggested Audience

This tutorial is intended for developers who are somewhat familiar with MyEclipse'sApplication Server feature set and Java application servers like Tomcat.

To learn more about the topics presented in this tutorial, please have a look at thelinks in our Resources section. To get a better feel for MyEclipse and learning moreabout it, please check out our product Documentation for more material.

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3. System Requirements

This tutorial was written using MyEclipse.

NOTE: Within MyEclipse JAX-WS reference implementation libraries are added tothe embedded MyEclipse Tomcat server to make development and testing of JAX-WSmuch easier. Deploying to an external Tomcat server or any other non-JavaEE 5

compliant server can require additional adjustments to the build path of any JAX-WS project, please see theJAX-WS Tutorialfor more information covering this.

MyEclipse Tomcat will work with all Java 5 and current 6 JDKs. However, if youwish to use a Java 6 JDK to run MyEclipse Tomcat, please use JDK 6 update 4

(1.6.0_04) or above to avoid JAX-WS API compatibility issues.

This tutorial was writtin using MyEclipse. However, if you notice portions of thistutorial looking different than the screens you are seeing, please let us know and we

will make sure to resolve any inconsistencies.

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4. Getting Started

To get introduced to the new embedded Tomcat server, let's first look at the server

view:

Figure 1. Server View

where we see the new Tomcat server listed along side the embedded Derby DB

server. From this view we can start, stop, restart and manage the server'sdeployment.

Another popular place for managing the server status is from the toolbar application

server buttons:


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Figure 2. Toolbar Application Server Controls

These sets of controls are simpler, but perform many of the same tasks. It's up toyou to decide which set of controls you'd rather use.

In addition to the new server controls, you can also access the embedded Tomcat 6preferences from the Application Server Connector preference pages similar tostandard application server connector configurations.

The embedded Tomcat configuration is referred to as the "MyEclipse Tomcat 6"connector as shown:

Figure 3. Embedded Tomcat 6 Preferences


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5. Creating a Web Project

Now that we know how to control the new Tomcat server, let's take it for a testdrive. First thing we need to do is create a new Web Project to work with. Go ahead

and create a new simple Java EE 5.0 Web Project:

Figure 4. New Web Project


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Figure 5. Configure the New Project

Our new project will look like this now:


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Figure 6. Simple Web Project Contents

and if we open the example index.jsp page that was created for us, we see a simpleexample JSP:


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Figure 7. Default JSP Page

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6. Deploying a Web Project

Now that we have a Web Project to work with, we can deploy it to Tomcat 6 and

begin developing it in real-time. To add a deployment of our project to Tomcat, wewant to select Tomcat from the Server View and click the Manage Deploymentsbutton:

Figure 8. Manage Deployments

When the new deployment dialog pops up, click Add:

Figure 9. Creating a new deployment


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Then filling in the deployment details (all the defaults are fine):

Figure 10. Creating a new deployment

And last you can verify that the deployment was successfully created under Tomcat:


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Figure 11. Deployment was successful

Now that the deployment of the project to Tomcat is successful, all there is left todo is run Tomcat and view the page from inside the IDE.

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7. Running the Web Project

The first thing we want to do to run this project is to first start up the embedded

Tomcat server. We do that by selecting it in the Server View again and clicking theDebug Server button. MyEclipse will switch to the Console View and you want towait until you can see that Tomcat had started:


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Figure 12. Tomcat Started Up

Switching back to the Server View shows the server's status as well as it'sdeployments:

Figure 13. Server Running State

Now you want to click the Web Browser button up in the toolbar and navigate tohttp://localhost:8080/SimpleWebProject to see if your JSP page loads correctly. Ifit does, you should see the simple sample JSP page:


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Figure 14. Simple JSP Page Running

To see some real-time editing in action, you can switch back to the JSP editor taband add some new text to the JSP page then save it:


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Figure 15. Modify the Simple JSP Page

Now flip back to the Web Browser and hit the Refresh button, you should see yourchanges immediately:


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Figure 16. Refreshing the Browser Shows Changes

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8. Debugging the Web Project

Now that we have our project deployed and are able to change it and refresh to see

our changes, let's look at taking that control 1 step farther and debug ourapplication.

Debugging our application isn't just handy to stop at break points and inspect values;we can also change variable values on the fly during the debug session and see themrealized immediately in the application as it's running.

Let's take look at an example page with a scriptlet as follows:


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Figure 17. JSP Page with a Scriplet

You can see that our Design and Source views are synchronized. Also notice that wedeclare our secretCode variable with the value h4x0r. Then we set a breakpoint on

the line where the scriplet prints out the variables value. Let's go back to our WebBrowser and refresh this page to hit the breakpoint:


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Figure 18. Hitting a JSP Breakpoint

We can see quite a bit of information above. Namely that our Tomcat thread hasbeen suspended, our breakpoint has been hit and displayed in the bottom portion ofthe screen where we are stopped. Then at the top right hand side of the screen we

see the variables defined in our JSP page. We also see that our secretCode variablehas the right value.

Now let's say we wanted to change that value on the fly. We can simply right-click

on it, and adjust it's value right here:


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Figure 19. Right-click to Change the Variable

Then type in a new value for the variable:

Figure 20. Enter the New Variable Value

After the new value is changed, you can see the updated value in the variables view:


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Figure 21. Update Value

So now in order to see our changed value print out in our webpage, we need to hit

Continue:

Figure 22. Click Continue

And flip back to the Web Browser to see if the value printed out for secretCode tothe website was updated to what we typed in:


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Figure 23. Updated Value Printed

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9. Conclusion

Hopefully from this simple guide you can begin to get an idea of how fast you can

get up and running with the embedded Tomcat server that now ships with MyEclipsewhen working on your own projects.

We also hope that you've seen some of the power of working with MyEclipse duringthe development cycle and how that can increase your development efficiency.

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10. Resources

In this section we want to provide you with additional links to resources thatsupplement the topics covered in this tutorial. While this is not an exhaustive list,we do make an effort to point to the more popular links that should provide you

with diverse, high-quality information.

y Sample Web Project (Used in this Guide)y Application Server Tutorial


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y Working with Web Projects Tutorialtop

11. Feedback

We would like to hear from you! If you liked this tutorial, has some suggestions oreven some corrections for us please let us know. We track all user feedback aboutour learning material in our Documentation Forum. Please be sure to let us knowwhich piece of MyEclipse material you are commenting on so we can quickly pinpointany issues that arise.

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Myeclipse Tomcat Server Tutorial

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