How to add a war file as a maven dependency in pom.xml file

Question

I have a project with 2 packages in it. I have a war file present in 1st package. I want to make use of this war file in package 2. How can I add maven dependency in package 2 pom.xml file.

Answer 1

In general war package usually don't make sense to use them as dependencies. But you can create separate jar packages of the classes (incl. resources) which are in the war project. This can be achieved by using the following in your 1st package:

<project>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.6</version>
        <configuration>
          <attachClasses>true</attachClasses>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

So this create a supplemental jar file with the following coordinates groupId:artifactId:classifier:version in this case groupId:artifactId:classes:version which you now can use as a dependency in your 2nd project.