maven - Spring Boot/Angular 2/4 project war build

Question

I have a Spring Boot and Angular 2/4 project that I want to package into a single WAR and serve on Tomcat. I have a parent project with 2 modules (1 for Angular and 1 for Spring Boot), with the following pom.xml configurations:

parent/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>mk.edu.ukim.feit.bolt</groupId>
<artifactId>parent</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>pom</packaging>

<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.5.3.RELEASE</version>
    <relativePath/>
</parent>

<modules>
    <module>api</module>
    <module>frontend</module>
</modules>

frontend/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>

<artifactId>frontend</artifactId>


<name>Bolt Client</name>
<description>Bolt messaging app frontend client</description>

<parent>
    <groupId>mk.edu.ukim.feit.bolt</groupId>
    <artifactId>parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</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>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>com.github.eirslett</groupId>
            <artifactId>frontend-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.4</version>

            <configuration>
                <nodeVersion>v7.9.0</nodeVersion>
                <npmVersion>4.6.1</npmVersion>
                <workingDirectory>src/main/frontend</workingDirectory>
            </configuration>

            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>install node and npm</id>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>install-node-and-npm</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>

                <execution>
                    <id>npm install</id>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>npm</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>

                <execution>
                    <id>npm run prod</id>

                    <goals>
                        <goal>npm</goal>
                    </goals>

                    <configuration>
                        <arguments>run prod</arguments>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>

    <resources>
        <resource>
            <directory>target/frontend</directory>
            <targetPath>static</targetPath>
        </resource>
    </resources>
</build>

api/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>

<artifactId>api</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<name>Bolt API</name>
<description>Bolt messaging app REST API</description>
<packaging>war</packaging>

<parent>
    <groupId>mk.edu.ukim.feit.bolt</groupId>
    <artifactId>parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
</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-aop</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <!--<dependency>-->
        <!--<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>-->
        <!--<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-jdbc</artifactId>-->
    <!--</dependency>-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web-services</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-websocket</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework.boot/spring-boot-starter-mail -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-mail</artifactId>
        <version>1.5.6.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-logging</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.restdocs</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-restdocs-mockmvc</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
        <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
        <version>${h2.version}</version>
        <scope>compile</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.jsonwebtoken/jjwt -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>io.jsonwebtoken</groupId>
        <artifactId>jjwt</artifactId>
        <version>0.6.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/joda-time/joda-time -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>joda-time</groupId>
        <artifactId>joda-time</artifactId>
        <version>2.9.9</version>
    </dependency>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/commons-validator/commons-validator -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-validator</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-validator</artifactId>
        <version>1.6</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>mk.edu.ukim.feit.bolt</groupId>
        <artifactId>frontend</artifactId>
        <version>${project.version}</version>
        <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

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

I was following this tutorial and I ended up successfully building the project running mvn clean install from the parent directory, then going into the api directory and running mvn spring-boot:run, the application is served on localhost:8080, however while building the war file Maven somehow doesn't pick up the static files compiled from Angular and gives me a 404 on http://localhost:8080 . Could anyone give tips on what might be wrong here?

I also tried setting the "prod" NPM script to "ng build --prod --base-href=\\"./\\"" thinking it might have to do something with it but it didn't help. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The solution I found:

1. Copy a single "index.html" file to "src/main/resources/templates" folder under server project. Please note that HTML file structure must be very strict (all opened tags must be closed etc).
2. Add maven dependency "spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf"
3. Create HomeController for request mapping "/" to "index" template

Sample:

@Controller
public class HomeContoller {
    @RequestMapping("/")
    public String index() {
        return "index";
    }
}

See GitHub commit with HomeController
Would be great if someone know more cleaner/nicer solution and could share.