Can not access deployed WAR file on Tomcat

Question

I have a Spring boot rest service project which works on my local machine. When I run the application as "Spring Boot App"

I can access the rest service by going to

http://127.0.0.1:8080/persons/all

and it returns JSON as it's supposed to.

I changed the pom.xml packaging to war, I then created a war by going to Run as -> Maven build in Spring tools suit. It creates a war file. When I upload the war file on http://myserverip:8080/manager/ I get no errors and it shows up under Applications

The war file name is "myapp-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war" after uploading it, I tried to access it by going to

http://myserverip:8080/myapp-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/persons/all

But I get a 404 error

What am I doing wrong here?

my pom.xml

<?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/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
    <artifactId>myapp</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <name>myapp</name>
    <description>myappapi</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.2.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>


    <packaging>war</packaging>
</project>

When I build the application, I get the following logs

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building myapp 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.6:resources (default-resources) @ myapp ---
[INFO] Using 'UTF-8' encoding to copy filtered resources.
[INFO] Copying 1 resource
[INFO] Copying 0 resource
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:3.1:compile (default-compile) @ myapp ---
[INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.6:testResources (default-testResources) @ myapp ---
[INFO] Not copying test resources
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:3.1:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ myapp ---
[INFO] Not compiling test sources
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-surefire-plugin:2.18.1:test (default-test) @ myapp ---
[INFO] Tests are skipped.
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- maven-war-plugin:2.6:war (default-war) @ myapp ---
[INFO] Packaging webapp
[INFO] Assembling webapp [myapp] in [C:\Users\me\Documents\workspace-sts-3.8.2.RELEASE\myapp\target\myapp-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT]
[INFO] Processing war project
[INFO] Webapp assembled in [586 msecs]
[INFO] Building war: C:\Users\me\Documents\workspace-sts-3.8.2.RELEASE\myapp\target\myapp-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- spring-boot-maven-plugin:1.4.2.RELEASE:repackage (default) @ myapp ---
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 3.300 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2016-11-21T10:12:03-05:00
[INFO] Final Memory: 20M/243M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[WARNING] The requested profile "pom.xml" could not be activated because it does not exist.

my MyappApplication.java

package com.mycompany;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@ComponentScan
public class MyappApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(MyappApplication.class, args);
    }
}

You can change your buid name to myapp in pom.xml. Check if the `/persons/all` is registered while server is starting up. If not it will show a 404 error as your controller is not registerd properly. — Lucky, Nov 21 '16 at 06:44
@Lucky but the application works fine on my local machine. Would it possible that it would register locally with Spring boot, but not register when deployed on Tomcat with a war file? — Arya, Nov 21 '16 at 07:53
Yes, please check your tomcat server logs. Spring boot uses embedded tomcat. You are deploying into a separate tomcat instance. Both are different. — Lucky, Nov 21 '16 at 08:39
@Lucky after starting tomcat I do see that myapp is being deployed, but nothing about /persons/all http://pastebin.com/9iyPxuBs — Arya, Nov 21 '16 at 15:30
I expect your components, configurations, service to be under the `company` package. If not have those inside this package. Also Instead of using the three `@Configuration`, `@EnableAutoConfiguration` and `@ComponentScan` annotations, use this single `@SpringBootApplication` annotation. Also add `spring-webmvc` dependency to your webapp. This flags the application as a web application and activates key behaviors such as setting up a `DispatcherServlet`.(i.e. similar to adding `@EnableWebMvc`) — Lucky, Nov 22 '16 at 06:56
But, AFAIK you deploy Spring Boot application in an embedded Tomcat container provided by sprint boot itself, instead of traditional standalone tomcat instance. `Make jar not war ;)`. If you still want to make traditional war file and deploy it refer this https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/howto-traditional-deployment.html — Lucky, Nov 22 '16 at 07:03

Lucky · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-22T07:23:41.647

Refer: Packaging executable jar and war files

As mentioned in comments, you can deploy spring boot application traditionally by deploying war to a standalone tomcat instance. You need to make some changes to your MyappApplication.java class which has the main() method.

Make your MyappApplication to extend SpringBootServletInitializer and override its configure() method,

@SpringBootApplication
public class MyappApplication extends SpringBootServletInitializer {

    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
        return application.sources(Application.class);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        SpringApplication.run(MyappApplication.class, args);
    }

}

The next step is to have packaging as war instead of the default jar which you already have.
Finally in your pom.xml change the embedded tomcat container's scope to provided, so that it doesn't conflict when you deploy to a separate instance.

thank you it works now :) but SpringBootServletInitializer shows up as depreciated. — Arya, Nov 22 '16 at 16:12
@Arya You might be using `org.springframework.boot.context.web.SpringBootServletInitializer` use `org.springframework.boot.web.support.SpringBootServletInitializer` instead. — Lucky, Nov 23 '16 at 06:39

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 21 '16 at 06:31

if you are changing jar to war of spring boot add following dependencies

 <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#build-tool-plugins-maven-packaging

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 21 '16 at 09:46

Checklist for changing a spring boot executable jar into a deployable war.

Change packaging in pom.xml to "war" from "jar"

As kuhajeyan mentioned, mark your embedded tomcat dependency as provided in the pom.xml.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
  <scope>provided</scope>

Make your main spring boot application class extend SpringBootServletInitializer like this

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
@Override
protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
return application.sources(Application.class);
 }
}

From the documentations

Can not access deployed WAR file on Tomcat

3 Answers3

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