Running Manager Commands Using Ant Tasks

The version of Ant distributed with the Java WSDP supports tasks that invoke manager commands, thus allowing you to run the commands from a terminal window. The tasks are summarized in Table B-2.

Table B-2 Ant Web Application Manager Tasks
Function	Ant Task Syntax
list	`<list url="url" username="username" password="password" />`
install	`<install url="url" path="mywebapp" war="" username="username" password="password" />` The value of the `war` attribute can be a WAR file (`jar:file:/path/to/mywebapp.war!/)` or an unpacked directory (`file:/path/to/mywebapp).`
reload	`<reload url="url" path="mywebapp" username="username" password="password" />`
deploy	`<deploy url="url" path="mywebapp" war="file:/path/to/mywebapp.war" username="username" password="password" />`
undeploy	`<undeploy url="url" path="mywebapp" username="username" password="password" />`
remove	`<remove url="url" path="mywebapp" username="username" password="password" />`

Note: An application that is installed is not available after Tomcat is restarted. To make an application permanently available, use the deploy task.

Since a user of the manager is required to be authenticated, the Ant tasks take username and password attributes in addition to the URL. Instead of embedding these in the Ant build file, you can use the approach followed by the tutorial examples. You set the username and password properties in a file named build.properties in the directory <INSTALL>/examples/common as follows:

Replace ManagerName and ManagerPassword with the values you specified for the user name and password when you installed the Java WSDP.

The document Manager App HOW-TO, distributed with the Java WSDP at <JWSDP_HOME>/docs/tomcat/manager-howto.html, contains reference information about the Ant tasks application.