Maven2: Best practice for Enterprise Project (EAR file)
Solution 1:
You create a new project. The new project is your EAR assembly project which contains your two dependencies for your EJB project and your WAR project.
So you actually have three maven projects here. One EJB. One WAR. One EAR that pulls the two parts together and creates the ear.
Deployment descriptors can be generated by maven, or placed inside the resources directory in the EAR project structure.
The maven-ear-plugin is what you use to configure it, and the documentation is good, but not quite clear if you're still figuring out how maven works in general.
So as an example you might do something like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myEar</artifactId>
<packaging>ear</packaging>
<name>My EAR</name>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<source>1.5</source>
<target>1.5</target>
<encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<version>1.4</version>
<modules>
<webModule>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myWar</artifactId>
<bundleFileName>myWarNameInTheEar.war</bundleFileName>
<contextRoot>/myWarConext</contextRoot>
</webModule>
<ejbModule>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myEjb</artifactId>
<bundleFileName>myEjbNameInTheEar.jar</bundleFileName>
</ejbModule>
</modules>
<displayName>My Ear Name displayed in the App Server</displayName>
<!-- If I want maven to generate the application.xml, set this to true -->
<generateApplicationXml>true</generateApplicationXml>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3</version>
<configuration>
<encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
<finalName>myEarName</finalName>
</build>
<!-- Define the versions of your ear components here -->
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myWar</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
<artifactId>myEjb</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>ejb</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>
Solution 2:
What helped me a lot was to run the Maven archetype:generate goal and select from one of the archetypes, some of which seem to be updated regularly (in particular JBoss seems to be well maintained).
mvn archetype:generate
Hundreds of archetypes appeared in a numbered list from which to select (519 as of now!). The goal, still running, prompted me to make a selection by entering a number or entering a search string e.g.:
513: remote -> org.xwiki.commons:xwiki-commons-component-archetype
514: remote -> org.xwiki.rendering:xwiki-rendering-archetype-macro
515: remote -> org.zkoss:zk-archetype-component
516: remote -> org.zkoss:zk-archetype-webapp
517: remote -> ru.circumflex:circumflex-archetype (-)
518: remote -> se.vgregion.javg.maven.archetypes:javg-minimal-archetype (-)
Choose a number or apply filter (format: [groupId:]artifactId, case sensitive contains):
I entered the search string "ear," which reduced the list to only 8 items (as of today):
Choose archetype:
1: remote -> org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes:ear-j2ee14 (-)
2: remote -> org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes:ear-javaee6 (-)
3: remote -> org.codehaus.mojo.archetypes:ear-jee5 (-)
4: remote -> org.hibernate:hibernate-search-quickstart (-)
5: remote -> org.jboss.spec.archetypes:jboss-javaee6-ear-webapp
6: remote -> org.jboss.spec.archetypes:jboss-javaee6-webapp-ear-archetype
7: remote -> org.jboss.spec.archetypes:jboss-javaee6-webapp-ear-archetype-blank
8: remote -> org.ow2.weblab.tools.maven:weblab-archetype-searcher
I selected "org.jboss.spec.archetypes:jboss-javaee6-ear-webapp" (by entering the selection "5" in this example).
Next, the goal asked me to enter the groupId, artifactId, package names, etc., and it then generated the following well-documented example application:
[pgarner@localhost Foo]$ tree
.
|-- Foo-ear
| `-- pom.xml
|-- Foo-ejb
| |-- pom.xml
| `-- src
| |-- main
| | |-- java
| | | `-- com
| | | `-- foo
| | | |-- controller
| | | | `-- MemberRegistration.java
| | | |-- data
| | | | `-- MemberListProducer.java
| | | |-- model
| | | | `-- Member.java
| | | `-- util
| | | `-- Resources.java
| | `-- resources
| | |-- import.sql
| | `-- META-INF
| | |-- beans.xml
| | `-- persistence.xml
| `-- test
| |-- java
| | `-- com
| | `-- foo
| | `-- test
| | `-- MemberRegistrationTest.java
| `-- resources
|-- Foo-web
| |-- pom.xml
| `-- src
| `-- main
| |-- java
| | `-- com
| | `-- foo
| | `-- rest
| | |-- JaxRsActivator.java
| | `-- MemberResourceRESTService.java
| `-- webapp
| |-- index.html
| |-- index.xhtml
| |-- resources
| | |-- css
| | | `-- screen.css
| | `-- gfx
| | |-- banner.png
| | `-- logo.png
| `-- WEB-INF
| |-- beans.xml
| |-- faces-config.xml
| `-- templates
| `-- default.xhtml
|-- pom.xml
`-- README.md
32 directories, 23 files
After reading the four POM files, which were well-commented, I had pretty much all the information I needed.
./pom.xml
./Foo-ear/pom.xml
./Foo-ejb/pom.xml
./Foo-web/pom.xml
Solution 3:
i have made a github repository to show what i think is a good (or best practices) startup project structure...
https://github.com/StefanHeimberg/stackoverflow-1134894
some keywords:
- Maven 3
- BOM (DependencyManagement of own dependencies)
- Parent for all Projects (DependencyManagement from external dependencies and PluginManagement for global Project configuration)
- JUnit / Mockito / DBUnit
- Clean War project without WEB-INF/lib because dependencies are in EAR/lib folder.
- Clean Ear project.
- Minimal deployment descriptors for Java EE7
- No Local EJB Interface because @LocalBean is sufficient.
- Minimal maven configuration through maven user properties
- Actual Deployment Descriptors for Servlet 3.1 / EJB 3.2 / JPA 2.1
- usage of macker-maven-plugin to check architecture rules
- Integration Tests enabled, but skipped. (skipITs=false) useful to enable on CI Build Server
Maven Output:
Reactor Summary:
MyProject - BOM .................................... SUCCESS [ 0.494 s]
MyProject - Parent ................................. SUCCESS [ 0.330 s]
MyProject - Common ................................. SUCCESS [ 3.498 s]
MyProject - Persistence ............................ SUCCESS [ 1.045 s]
MyProject - Business ............................... SUCCESS [ 1.233 s]
MyProject - Web .................................... SUCCESS [ 1.330 s]
MyProject - Application ............................ SUCCESS [ 0.679 s]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BUILD SUCCESS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total time: 8.817 s
Finished at: 2015-01-27T00:51:59+01:00
Final Memory: 24M/207M
------------------------------------------------------------------------