Creating a Struts 2 Project Using Maven on Tomcat With IntelliJ IDEA

This post describes how to create a Java project using Struts 2 as the web framework, Maven as the build system to automatically deploy to Tomcat using IntelliJ IDEA 10 as the IDE.

Setting up Maven:

• Download the latest version of Maven from http://maven.apache.org/download.html.
• Install Maven by following the instructions at http://maven.apache.org/download.html#Installation.

Creating a Blank Struts 2 Project Using Maven

• Change directory to the directory you want the project created in.
• mvn archetype:generate -B -DgroupId=com.mycompany.myapp -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.struts -DarchetypeArtifactId=struts2-archetype-blank -DarchetypeVersion=<struts version ex. 2.2.3>

Creating the IDEA Project

• File->New Project
• Select the option "Create Java project from existing sources".  Then click "Next"
• Enter a name and location for your project.  Then click "Next" 
• Select "Do not create source directory" as the source directory was already created by Maven.
• Click "Next" twice, then "Finish".

Associate Maven Project with IDEA

• Go to"Maven" in the IDEA preferences.
• For the Maven home directory value enter the location where you installed Maven ex. /usr/local/apache-maven/apache-maven-3.0.3
• Click "Maven Projects" on the right side of the IDE.
• Click  the "+" button to add a new Maven project.
• Select the pom.xml that was created by Maven.

Add Struts and Dependencies Libraries

• In IDEA go to the "Project Structure" menu item, click "Libraries" under "Project Settings".
• Click the button "Attach Classes from Repository".
• Enter org.apache.struts:struts-core:<struts version> ex. org.apache.struts:struts-core:2.2.3
• Click "OK".
• This will add the libraries to a lib folder in your IDEA project.

Add the Mojo Tomcat Deployment Plugin to the pom.xml

• Add the following code snippet to the plugins section of the pom.xml.
•             <plugin>
                  <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                  <artifactId>tomcat-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                  <version>1.1</version>
                  <configuration>
                      <url>http://localhost:8080/manager/html</url>
                      <warFile>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.war</warFile>
                      <server>tomcat-localhost</server>
                  </configuration>
              </plugin>
• Note that the url and server values may need to be updated to reflect your installation.
• In the Maven settings.xml add the following snippet to the "servers" section.
•     <server>
        <id>tomcat-localhost</id>
        <username>username</username>
        <password>password</password>
      </server>
• Note that the id must match the server name in the pom.xml and the username/password must be for the user that has the role "manager-gui".
• To deploy to tomcat, in IDEA under the "Maven Projects" tab you should now see tomcat under "Plugins".  There you can select "tomcat:deploy" or "tomcat:redeploy" to deploy your application.