Converting Maven project to Dynamic Web Project for Eclipse

Question

1. Create a web project using Maven:

    mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.trial -DartifactId=message -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp -DinteractiveMode=false

2. Convert the project to Eclipse web project using:

    mvn eclipse:eclipse -Dwtpversion=2.0

3. Import existing project into Eclipse:

The project icon contains an folder instead of a web icon and folder icon. I find this a bit strange and when I try to run also, the run on server option is missing. I am sure I followed the steps correctly. Where may I be lagging to obtains such a result ?

Answer 1

I have the below's suggestions :

1. First check whether your eclipse is in Jave EE Perspective or not. If it was in only Java perspective, run option will not come.

2. Right click on your project, go to properties.

   Click on Project Facets

   Check whether Dynamic Web module is check marked or not. If not just check marked it.

Answer 2

WTP version is rather old, you should add a web project features instead. Edit the .project file and write under the natures tag

<nature>org.eclipse.wst.common.project.facet.core.nature</nature>
<nature>org.eclipse.wst.common.modulecore.ModuleCoreNature</nature>

and under the buildSpec tag add builders

<buildCommand>
    <name>org.eclipse.wst.common.project.facet.core.builder</name>
    <arguments>
    </arguments>
</buildCommand>
<buildCommand>
    <name>org.eclipse.wst.validation.validationbuilder</name>
    <arguments>
    </arguments>
</buildCommand>

Answer 3

If you want to create maven webapp by only using eclipse without switching to command line, then following the below steps is better.

Following steps work in eclipse 2020-06

1. File->New->Maven Project
2. Choose "Create a simple project (skip archetype selection)"
3. Choose packaging as "war" (this will create both webapp and java folders)
4. Create the project after specifying group id and artifact id
5. Update pom.xml with java and compiler versions, then right click on project, select Maven->Update project
6. If the project is not faceted form (Its not in faceted form if on expanding project in Project explorer, it doesn't show details such as "Deployment Descriptor" and "JAX-WS Web Services", this happened in one of my eclipse installation and i had no clue why), then do the following steps
   1. right click on project, go to Properties, click on Project Facets, convert to faceted form, choose correct "Dynamic Web Module" version, enable the checkbox and also choose correct Java Facet version.
   2. "Further configuration available" gets displayed in that window, click on it and specify WebContent folder. (replace WebContent by src/main/webapp)
   3. If you want to run the application in servers configured in eclipse, then specify maven dependencies to be deployed in "Deployment Assembly". This will deploy maven "provided" dependencies also, but i think its fine for testing. For actual distribution, you can supply war file generated from maven package.