Developing JSP/JSF pages without frequent redeploying @ Blog of Adam Warski

Developing JSP/JSF pages without frequent redeploying

Posted on September 27th, 2007 Adam Warski 10 comments

Imagine you are developing a web application, which displays some JSP files. It is pretty annoying to have to re-deploy the application whenever you make any change to a JSP to see the result in the browser (there are other ways to get rid of that annoying problem, of course; here I’m describing only one way of many). It would be really handy if the JSP files were read from outside the .war – most preferably, from the directory in which you develop your web application.

This is where the resources filter may help you. This filter reads JSP files (and other resources) from a specified directory in the file system, instead of reading them from the deployed application archive. Thanks to that, if you are developing web pages, you can edit them using your favorite IDE and view your changes immediately.

To use the filter, you only need to include a jar with one class and add one filter definition to your web.xml. The filter works with JBoss AS 4.0.5 and 4.2, portlets and JSF. For more details check out:
- usage & configuration (wiki), and of course
- downloads.
Cheers,
Adam

JBoss, Java
8 responses to “Developing JSP/JSF pages without frequent redeploying”
- jerry September 28th, 2007 at 12:04
  
  Great post!
  Will it also work for facelets?
  Thanks
- Adam Warski September 28th, 2007 at 17:25
  
  I haven’t tested it, but I think it should. You will only have to set the “facelets.REFRESH_PERIOD” initialization parameter to a low value (but certainly not -1). If you leave it at the default value, you will see the changes after a maximum 2 second delay. Also see: https://facelets.dev.java.net/nonav/docs/dev/docbook.html#config-webapp-init
- Xavier Van Ausloos September 28th, 2007 at 17:32
  
  Perfect info really ! Tks again for the tips
- Adam Warski September 28th, 2007 at 17:45
  
  Again about facelets: another solution (in some cases giving you more flexibility) is to write your own resource resolver.
- A G September 28th, 2007 at 18:26
  
  IDEA 7.0 bring on very nice “update resources on frame deactivation” feature. Seek it on web facet tab. Enable it and you will not need to bother about redeploying in most cases.
- Wahoo October 7th, 2007 at 07:06
  
  Thank you for sharing!
- leuisc October 10th, 2007 at 14:54
  
  Hi
  
  Tell please where it is possible to find articles or news on the given theme.
  by
- Jose Luis November 22nd, 2007 at 20:13
  
  I just want to say thank you. In another way if you know same site with deep information about some light portlet container (like pluto) and portlet secrets, please tell me.
  Thanks again, Luis
2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks
- Blog of Adam Warski » Blog Archive » Developing with Seam and without frequent redeploying October 12th, 2007 at 09:46
  
  [...] in combination with JBoss Tools already has the features I wrote about some time ago (see here), unless, for example, you aren’t using Eclipse or you want to [...]
- Blog of Adam Warski » Blog Archive » Instant Facelets: changes in .xhtml and no redeploying December 7th, 2007 at 14:03
  
  [...] If you want also other resources to be read from disk (like css files), try the Resources Filter. [...]
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