Thank you for the reply, Christoph.
On 16-07-05 03:32 AM, Christoph Nenning wrote:
Hello. I am seeking some advice for the best ways to deploy Java web
applications to different Tomcat environments.
In particular, my application requires that a JNDI resource be defined
for a database, where the database server address and credentials will
vary depending on the environment the application is deployed to.
* Tomcat: 8.0.36
* OS: varies depending on the environment deployed to
If I include in the WAR file, a META-INF/context.xml that includes the
Resource element, Tomcat will use that to create the file:
$CATALINA_HOME/conf/engine/host/my-application.xml
The context file my-application.xml can then be modified so that the
Resource settings are appropriate for the environment.
However, if, for any reason, the application is undeployed and then
re-deployed, my-application.xml will be recreated with the settings as
they originally appeared in the WAR file.
The options that seem evident to me are:
1) Create a different WAR file for each environment. This strikes me as
a bit onerous.
2) Use environment variables in my-application.xml such as:
url="${databaseurl}" and then define those environment variables using
the Environment element in the GlobalNamingResources of Tomcat's
server.xml.
Regarding #2, would it be possible to instead use a properties file to
define the variables? I assume adding entries to catalina.properties
would work, but is it possible to define a properties file separate from
catalina.properties which deals more with system properties rather than
application properties?
We set such system properties in setenv.sh, e.g.:
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Ddatabase.password=$DATABASE_PASSWORD"
The environment variable $DATABASE_PASSWORD is used because we wrap our
applications along with tomcat and jvm in docker images. Operations
specify environment specific parameters (as database passwords) when they
launch the docker container with -e switch, e.g.:
docker run -d -e DATABASE_PASSWORD=secret .....
Due to docker we don't need context.xml files inside WARs. Instead we have
application specific tomcat config files in our source trees. Our build
process includes them in the docker image as top level tomcat config. As
we build application specific images there is just one app per image and
thus per tomcat instance.
Of course that is linux only.
I don't believe docker is an option for me. At least, not at this
time. I do like the idea of setting environment-specific variables as
system properties in the setenv.sh. However, setting passwords there
gives me pause for security reasons since it would be visible to
anything running within the Tomcat environment, should there be some way
to exploit a vulnerability and access Tomcat's system properties or
environment variables remotely.
Thank you for sharing,
Philip
regards,
Christoph
I haven't been able to find a documented standard methodology for Tomcat
deployments to different environments, but I'm certain there must be
some common and elegant ways of doing this. I'm interested in hearing
what others have done.
Thank you,
Philip
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
This Email was scanned by Sophos Anti Virus
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tomcat.apache.org
