An extension of the Jar task with special
treatment for files that should end up in the
WEB-INF/lib, WEB-INF/classes or
WEB-INF directories of the Web Application Archive.
(The War task is a shortcut for specifying the particular layout of a WAR file. The same thing can be accomplished by using the prefix and fullpath attributes of zipfilesets in a Zip or Jar task.)
The extended zipfileset element from the zip task (with attributes prefix, fullpath, and src) is available in the War task. The task is also resource-enabled and will add nested resources and resource collections to the archive.
Before Servlet API 2.5/Java EE 5, a WEB-INF/web.xml file was mandatory in a
WAR file, so this task failed if the webxml attribute was missing.
As the web.xml file is now optional, the webxml attribute may now
be made optional. However, as most real web applications do need a web.xml file,
it is not optional by default. The task will fail if the file is not
included, unless the needxmlfile attribute
is set to true. The task
will warn if more than one web.xml file is added to the JAR
through the filesets.
Please note that the Zip format allows multiple files of the same
fully-qualified name to exist within a single archive. This has been
documented as causing various problems for unsuspecting users. If you wish
to avoid this behavior you must set the duplicate attribute
to a value other than its default, "add".
| Attribute | Description | Required |
| destfile | the WAR file to create. | Exactly one of the two. |
| warfile | Deprecated name of the file to create -use destfile instead. | |
| webxml | The servlet configuration descriptor to use (WEB-INF/web.xml). | Yes, unless needxmlfile is true, the file is pulled in via a nested fileset, or an existing WAR file is being updated. |
| needxmlfile | Flag to indicate whether or not the web.xml file is needed. I=it should be set to false when generating servlet 2.5+ WAR files without a web.xml file. Since Ant 1.7 | No -default "true" |
| basedir | the directory from which to jar the files. | No |
| compress | Not only store data but also compress them, defaults to true. Unless you set the keepcompression attribute to false, this will apply to the entire archive, not only the files you've added while updating. | No |
| keepcompression | For entries coming from existing archives (like nested zipfilesets or while updating the archive), keep the compression as it has been originally instead of using the compress attribute. Defaults false. Since Ant 1.6 | No |
| encoding | The character encoding to use for filenames inside the archive. Defaults to UTF8. It is not recommended to change this value as the created archive will most likely be unreadable for Java otherwise. | No |
| filesonly | Store only file entries, defaults to false | No |
| includes | comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be included. All files are included when omitted. | No |
| includesfile | the name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an include pattern | No |
| excludes | comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be excluded. No files (except default excludes) are excluded when omitted. | No |
| excludesfile | the name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an exclude pattern | No |
| defaultexcludes | indicates whether default excludes should be used or not ("yes"/"no"). Default excludes are used when omitted. | No |
| manifest | the manifest file to use. | No |
| update | indicates whether to update or overwrite the destination file if it already exists. Default is "false". | No |
| duplicate | behavior when a duplicate file is found. Valid values are "add", "preserve", and "fail". The default value is "add". | No |
| roundup | Whether the file modification times will be
rounded up to the next even number of seconds. Zip archives store file modification times with a granularity of two seconds, so the times will either be rounded up or down. If you round down, the archive will always seem out-of-date when you rerun the task, so the default is to round up. Rounding up may lead to a different type of problems like JSPs inside a web archive that seem to be slightly more recent than precompiled pages, rendering precompilation useless. Defaults to true. Since Ant 1.6.2 |
No |
| level | Non-default level at which file compression should be performed. Valid values range from 0 (no compression/fastest) to 9 (maximum compression/slowest). Since Ant 1.7 | No |
The nested lib element specifies a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will
end up in the WEB-INF/lib directory of the war file.
The nested classes element specifies a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will
end up in the WEB-INF/classes directory of the war file.
The nested webinf element specifies a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will
end up in the WEB-INF directory of the war file. If this
fileset includes a file named web.xml, the file is
ignored and you will get a warning.
The nested metainf element specifies a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will
end up in the META-INF directory of the war file. If this
fileset includes a file named MANIFEST.MF, the file is
ignored and you will get a warning.
Assume the following structure in the project's base directory:
thirdparty/libs/jdbc1.jar thirdparty/libs/jdbc2.jar build/main/com/myco/myapp/Servlet.class src/metadata/myapp.xml src/html/myapp/index.html src/jsp/myapp/front.jsp src/graphics/images/gifs/small/logo.gif src/graphics/images/gifs/large/logo.gifthen the war file
myapp.war created with
<war destfile="myapp.war" webxml="src/metadata/myapp.xml">
<fileset dir="src/html/myapp"/>
<fileset dir="src/jsp/myapp"/>
<lib dir="thirdparty/libs">
<exclude name="jdbc1.jar"/>
</lib>
<classes dir="build/main"/>
<zipfileset dir="src/graphics/images/gifs"
prefix="images"/>
</war>
will consist of
WEB-INF/web.xml WEB-INF/lib/jdbc2.jar WEB-INF/classes/com/myco/myapp/Servlet.class META-INF/MANIFEST.MF index.html front.jsp images/small/logo.gif images/large/logo.gifusing Ant's default manifest file. The content of
WEB-INF/web.xml is identical to
src/metadata/myapp.xml.
We regulary receive bug reports that this task is creating the WEB-INF
directory, and thus it is our fault your webapp doesn't work. The cause
of these complaints lies in WinZip, which turns an all upper-case
directory into an all lower case one in a fit of helpfulness. Please check that
jar xvf yourwebapp.war shows the same behaviour before filing another
report.
Winzip has an option allowing all uppercase names (which is off by default!). It can be enabled by:
Menu "Options" -> "Configuration", "View" property/tab page, then "General" group box has an option called "Allow all uppercase file names".