Webapp tasks |  print-friendly |
by Ovidiu Predescu, Jeff Turner
Webapp tasks
These tasks relate to Anteater's ability to deploy webapps on an internal Tomcat server.
servletContainer
Anteater has the ability to listen for incoming HTTP requests, which is useful in testing asynchronous SOAP. Advanced SOAP applications interact by sending asynchronous SOAP requests to each other. After the request is sent, the other party responds later with a SOAP request to the initiating party.
Listening for incoming HTTP requests is achieved by embedding the Tomcat 3.3 servlet container inside Anteater.
servletContainer is used in conjunction with the listener element, which registers handlers with the servlet container. The servlet container should be started before any listener task is to be executed. Usually this is achieved by placing the servletContainer task inside an init target, on which all the other tasks depend upon:
<target name="init"> <servletContainer port="8100, 8101"/> </target> <target name="my-test" depends="init"> <listener path="/foo" ... /> <!-- Register a listener --> <httpRequest request="/foo" .. > <!-- Call the listener --> </target>
| Attribute name | Type | Default value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| port | Integer |
8080 |
Defines the ports on which the servlet container should listen on. Multiple ports can be specified by enumerating them with comma or space in between. |
| action | String |
start |
What action you wish the servlet container to take. If not specified, defaults to starting the container. Possible values are start and stop. |
| maxThreads | Integer |
Defines the maximum number of threads that can be spawned off by the servlet container when handling incoming HTTP requests. |
|
| maxSpareThreads | Integer |
Defines the maximum number of spare threads that can be alive at any time. |
|
| minSpareThreads | Integer |
Defines the minimum number of spare threads that should be available at all times. |
Elements allowed inside servletContainer: none
deploy
Because Anteater embeds a full blown servlet container in it, you can use Anteater to quickly deploy and test your Web application. This testing is not a replacement for testing how your Web application behaves when deployed on your preferred application server however. It is provided just as a quick way for you test the features of your application much faster.
In future, Anteater will add the ability to deploy a Web application on external servlet containers and application servers. And since Anteater is based on Ant, you can write a target which will start your application server right before the tests, run them and then shut it down at the end of the tests.
| Attribute name | Type | Default value | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| path | String |
Specifies the context path where the new Web application will be accessible in the URL space of the servlet container. |
|
| webapp | String |
The path to the location on the file system of the Web application. This path should point to either a .war file or to the expanded directory of the Web application. |
Elements allowed inside deploy: none
Examples
The following example shows how to deploy Apache Cocoon on Anteater's internal servlet container.
<target name="deploy" depends="init" description="Run Cocoon"> <deploy path="/cocoon" webapp="../xml-cocoon2/build/cocoon/webapp"/> ... </target>
