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 false when generating servlet 2.5+ WAR files without a web.xml file. Since Apache Ant 1.7 | No -default "true" |
| basedir | the directory from which to jar the files. | No |
| compress | Not only store data but also compress them, defaults to true. 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 |
| 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. Defaults false. Since Ant 1.6 | No |
| encoding | The character encoding to use for filenames
inside the archive. Defaults to UTF8. 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 |
| filesonly | Store only file entries, defaults to false | No |
| includes | comma- or space-separated list of patterns of files that must be included. All files are included when omitted. | No |
| includesfile | the 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 files (except default excludes) are excluded when omitted. | No |
| excludesfile | the 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"). Default excludes are used when omitted. | No |
| manifest | the manifest file to use. | No |
| filesetmanifest | behavior when a Manifest is found in a zipfileset or zipgroupfileset file is found. Valid values are "skip", "merge", and "mergewithoutmain". "merge" will merge all of the manifests together, and merge this into any other specified manifests. "mergewithoutmain" merges everything but the Main section of the manifests. Default value is "skip". | No |
| whenmanifestonly | behavior when no files match. Valid values are "fail", "skip", and "create". Default is "create". | No |
| update | indicates whether to update or overwrite the destination file if it already exists. Default is "false". | No |
| duplicate | behavior when a duplicate file is found. Valid values are "add", "preserve", and "fail". The default value is "add". | No |
| 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 two 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. Defaults to true. Since Ant 1.6.2 |
No |
| 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 true if 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", "always" and "not-encodable" which 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 true this may result in manifests containing multiple Class-Path attributes which violates the manifest specification. |
No, default is false |
| flattenAttributes | Whether to merge attributes occuring 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 |
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.gifthen 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 regulary 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".