An extension of the Jar task with special treatment for files that should end up in the WEB-INF/lib, WEB-INF/classes or WEB-INF directories of the Web Application Archive.
(The War task is a shortcut for specifying the particular layout of a WAR file. The
same thing can be accomplished by using the prefix and fullpath attributes
of zipfilesets in a Zip or Jar task.)
The extended zipfileset element from the zip task (with
attributes prefix, fullpath, and src) is available in
the War task. The task is also resource-enabled and will add nested resources and
resource collections to the archive.
Before Servlet API 2.5/Java EE 5, a WEB-INF/web.xml file was mandatory in a WAR
file, so this task failed if the webxml attribute was missing. As
the web.xml file is now optional, the webxml attribute may now be made
optional. However, as most real web applications do need a web.xml file, it is not
optional by default. The task will fail if the file is not included, unless
the needxmlfile attribute is set to false
. The task will warn if more than
one web.xml file is added to the JAR through the filesets.
Please note that the Zip format allows multiple files of the same fully-qualified name to
exist within a single archive. This has been documented as causing various problems for
unsuspecting users. If you wish to avoid this behavior you must set the duplicate
attribute to a value other than its default, add
.
| Attribute | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| destfile | the WAR file to create. | Exactly one of the two |
| warfile | Deprecated name of the file to create—use destfile instead. | |
| webxml | The servlet configuration descriptor to use (WEB-INF/web.xml). | Yes, unless needxmlfile is true, the file is pulled in via a nested fileset, or an existing WAR file is being updated. |
| needxmlfile | Flag to indicate whether or not the web.xml file is needed. It should be set
to falsewhen generating servlet 2.5+ WAR files without a web.xml file. Since Apache Ant 1.7 |
No; default is true |
| basedir | the directory from which to jar the files. | No |
| compress | Not only store data but also compress them. Unless you set the keepcompression
attribute to false, this will apply to the entire archive, not only the files you've added while updating. |
No; defaults to true |
| keepcompression | For entries coming from existing archives (like nested zipfilesets or while updating the archive), keep the compression as it has been originally instead of using the compress attribute. Since Ant 1.6 | No; defaults to false |
| encoding | The character encoding to use for filenames inside the archive. It is not
recommended to change this value as the created archive will most likely be unreadable for
Java otherwise. See also the discussion in the zip task page |
No; defaults to UTF8 |
| filesonly | Store only file entries | No; defaults to false |
| includes | Comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be included. | No; defaults to all (**) |
| includesfile | Name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an include pattern | No |
| excludes | Comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be excluded. | No; defaults to default excludes or none if defaultexcludes is no |
| excludesfile | Name of a file. Each line of this file is taken to be an exclude pattern | No |
| defaultexcludes | Indicates whether default excludes should be used or not (yes|no). |
No; defaults to yes |
| manifest | the manifest file to use. | No |
| filesetmanifest | behavior when a manifest is found in a zipfileset
or zipgroupfileset file. Valid values are skip, merge, and mergewithoutmain. mergewill merge all of the manifests together, and merge this into any other specified manifests. mergewithoutmainmerges everything but the Main section of the manifests. |
No; defaults to skip |
| whenmanifestonly | behavior when no files match. Valid values are fail, skip, and create. |
No; defaults to create |
| update | indicates whether to update or overwrite the destination file if it already exists. | No; defaults to false |
| duplicate | behavior when a duplicate file is found. Valid values are add, preserve, and fail. |
No; defaults to add |
| roundup | Whether the file modification times will be rounded up to the next even number of
seconds. Zip archives store file modification times with a granularity of 2 seconds, so the times will either be rounded up or down. If you round down, the archive will always seem out-of-date when you rerun the task, so the default is to round up. Rounding up may lead to a different type of problems like JSPs inside a web archive that seem to be slightly more recent than precompiled pages, rendering precompilation useless. Since Ant 1.6.2 |
No; defaults to true |
| level | Non-default level at which file compression should be performed. Valid values range
from 0(no compression/fastest) to 9(maximum compression/slowest). Since Ant 1.7 |
No |
| preserve0permissions | when updating an archive or adding entries from a different archive Ant will assume that a
Unix permissions value of 0 (nobody is allowed to do anything to the file/directory) means
that the permissions haven't been stored at all rather than real permissions and will instead
apply its own default values. Set this attribute to trueif you really want to preserve the original permission field. since Ant 1.8.0 |
No; default is false |
| useLanguageEncodingFlag | Whether to set the language encoding flag if the encoding is UTF-8. This setting doesn't
have any effect if the encoding is not UTF-8. Since Ant 1.8.0. See also the discussion in the zip task page |
No; default is true |
| createUnicodeExtraFields | Whether to create Unicode extra fields to store the file names a second time inside the
entry's metadata. Possible values are never, alwaysand not-encodeablewhich will only add Unicode extra fields if the file name cannot be encoded using the specified encoding. Since Ant 1.8.0. See also the discussion in the zip task page |
No; default is never |
| fallbacktoUTF8 | Whether to use UTF-8 and the language encoding flag instead of the specified encoding if a
file name cannot be encoded using the specified encoding. Since Ant 1.8.0. See also the discussion in the zip task page |
No; default is false |
| mergeClassPathAttributes | Whether to merge the Class-Path attributes found in different manifests (if
merging manifests). If false, only the attribute of the last merged manifest will be preserved. Since Ant 1.8.0. Unless you also set flattenAttributes to truethis may result in manifests containing multiple Class-Path
attributes which violates the manifest specification. |
No; default is false |
| flattenAttributes | Whether to merge attributes occurring more than once in a section (this can only happen for
the Class-Path attribute) into a single attribute. Since Ant 1.8.0. |
No; default is false |
| zip64Mode | When to use Zip64 extensions for entries. The possible values
are never, alwaysand as-needed. Since Ant 1.9.1. See also the discussion in the zip task page |
No; default is never |
| modificationtime | Set all stored file modification times to the given time. This can either be a number interpreted as milliseconds since 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z or a string that can be parsed as a ISO 8601 timestamp with optional timezone. Since Ant 1.10.2. | No |
The nested lib element specifies a FileSet. All
files included in this fileset will end up in the WEB-INF/lib directory of the war
file.
The nested classes element specifies
a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will end up in
the WEB-INF/classes directory of the war file.
The nested webinf element specifies
a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will end up in
the WEB-INF directory of the war file. If this fileset includes a file
named web.xml, the file is ignored and you will get a warning.
The nested metainf element specifies
a FileSet. All files included in this fileset will end up in
the META-INF directory of the war file. If this fileset includes a file
named MANIFEST.MF, the file is ignored and you will get a warning.
Assume the following structure in the project's base directory:
thirdparty/libs/jdbc1.jar thirdparty/libs/jdbc2.jar build/main/com/myco/myapp/Servlet.class src/metadata/myapp.xml src/html/myapp/index.html src/jsp/myapp/front.jsp src/graphics/images/gifs/small/logo.gif src/graphics/images/gifs/large/logo.gif
then the war file myapp.war created with
<war destfile="myapp.war" webxml="src/metadata/myapp.xml">
<fileset dir="src/html/myapp"/>
<fileset dir="src/jsp/myapp"/>
<lib dir="thirdparty/libs">
<exclude name="jdbc1.jar"/>
</lib>
<classes dir="build/main"/>
<zipfileset dir="src/graphics/images/gifs"
prefix="images"/>
</war>
will consist of
WEB-INF/web.xml WEB-INF/lib/jdbc2.jar WEB-INF/classes/com/myco/myapp/Servlet.class META-INF/MANIFEST.MF index.html front.jsp images/small/logo.gif images/large/logo.gifusing Ant's default manifest file. The content of WEB-INF/web.xml is identical to src/metadata/myapp.xml.
We regularly receive bug reports that this task is creating the WEB-INF directory
as web-inf (all lower case), and thus it is our fault your webapp doesn't work. The
cause of these complaints lies in WinZip, which turns an all upper-case directory into an all
lower-case one in a fit of helpfulness. Please check that jar xvf yourwebapp.war shows
the same behaviour before filing another report.
WinZip has an option allowing all uppercase
names (which is off by default!). It can be enabled by: Menu Options
→ Configuration
, View
property/tab page, then General
group box has an
option called Allow all uppercase file names
.