Skip Navigation
Show nav
Heroku Dev Center
  • Get Started
  • Documentation
  • Changelog
  • Search
  • Get Started
    • Node.js
    • Ruby on Rails
    • Ruby
    • Python
    • Java
    • PHP
    • Go
    • Scala
    • Clojure
  • Documentation
  • Changelog
  • More
    Additional Resources
    • Home
    • Elements
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Careers
    • Help
    • Status
    • Events
    • Podcasts
    • Compliance Center
    Heroku Blog

    Heroku Blog

    Find out what's new with Heroku on our blog.

    Visit Blog
  • Log inorSign up
View categories

Categories

  • Heroku Architecture
    • Dynos (app containers)
    • Stacks (operating system images)
    • Networking & DNS
    • Platform Policies
    • Platform Principles
  • Command Line
  • Deployment
    • Deploying with Git
    • Deploying with Docker
    • Deployment Integrations
  • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Integration
  • Language Support
    • Node.js
    • Ruby
      • Working with Bundler
      • Rails Support
    • Python
      • Background Jobs in Python
      • Working with Django
    • Java
      • Working with Maven
      • Java Database Operations
      • Working with the Play Framework
      • Working with Spring Boot
      • Java Advanced Topics
    • PHP
    • Go
      • Go Dependency Management
    • Scala
    • Clojure
  • Databases & Data Management
    • Heroku Postgres
      • Postgres Basics
      • Postgres Getting Started
      • Postgres Performance
      • Postgres Data Transfer & Preservation
      • Postgres Availability
      • Postgres Special Topics
    • Heroku Data For Redis
    • Apache Kafka on Heroku
    • Other Data Stores
  • Monitoring & Metrics
    • Logging
  • App Performance
  • Add-ons
    • All Add-ons
  • Collaboration
  • Security
    • App Security
    • Identities & Authentication
    • Compliance
  • Heroku Enterprise
    • Private Spaces
      • Infrastructure Networking
    • Enterprise Accounts
    • Enterprise Teams
    • Heroku Connect (Salesforce sync)
      • Heroku Connect Administration
      • Heroku Connect Reference
      • Heroku Connect Troubleshooting
    • Single Sign-on (SSO)
  • Patterns & Best Practices
  • Extending Heroku
    • Platform API
    • App Webhooks
    • Heroku Labs
    • Building Add-ons
      • Add-on Development Tasks
      • Add-on APIs
      • Add-on Guidelines & Requirements
    • Building CLI Plugins
    • Developing Buildpacks
    • Dev Center
  • Accounts & Billing
  • Troubleshooting & Support
  • Integrating with Salesforce
  • Language Support
  • Java
  • Java Advanced Topics
  • Create a Java Web Application Using Embedded Tomcat

Create a Java Web Application Using Embedded Tomcat

English — 日本語に切り替える

Last updated December 16, 2019

Table of Contents

  • Prerequisites
  • Create your pom.xml
  • Add a launcher class
  • Add a Servlet
  • Add a JSP
  • Run your application
  • Deploy your application to Heroku
  • Create a Procfile
  • Deploy to Heroku
  • Clone the source

This tutorial will show you how to create a simple Java web application using embedded Tomcat.

Follow each step to build an app from scratch, or skip to the end get the source for this article.

Sample code for the embedded Tomcat demo is available on GitHub.

Prerequisites

  • Basic Java knowledge, including an installed version of the JVM and Maven.
  • Basic Git knowledge, including an installed version of Git.

Create your pom.xml

Create a folder to hold your app and create a file called pom.xml in the root of that folder with the following contents:

<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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.heroku.sample</groupId>
  <artifactId>embeddedTomcatSample</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <name>embeddedTomcatSample Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
  <properties>
    <tomcat.version>8.5.23</tomcat.version>
  </properties>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-embed-core</artifactId>
        <version>${tomcat.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
        <version>${tomcat.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-jasper</artifactId>
        <version>${tomcat.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-jasper-el</artifactId>
        <version>${tomcat.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-jsp-api</artifactId>
        <version>${tomcat.version}</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <finalName>embeddedTomcatSample</finalName>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>appassembler-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.0.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <assembleDirectory>target</assembleDirectory>
                <programs>
                    <program>
                        <mainClass>launch.Main</mainClass>
                        <name>webapp</name>
                    </program>
                </programs>
            </configuration>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>assemble</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

This pom.xml defines the dependencies that you’ll need to run Tomcat in an embedded mode.

The last 3 entries are only required for applications that use JSP files. If you use this technique for an application that doesn’t use JSPs then you can just include the first 3 dependencies.

There is also a single plugin defined. The appassembler plugin generates a launch script that automatically sets up your classpath and calls your main method (created below) to launch your application.

Add a launcher class

Create a file called Main.java in your src/main/java/launch directory and put the following in it:

package launch;

import java.io.File;

import org.apache.catalina.WebResourceRoot;
import org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext;
import org.apache.catalina.startup.Tomcat;
import org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet;
import org.apache.catalina.webresources.StandardRoot;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

        String webappDirLocation = "src/main/webapp/";
        Tomcat tomcat = new Tomcat();

        //The port that we should run on can be set into an environment variable
        //Look for that variable and default to 8080 if it isn't there.
        String webPort = System.getenv("PORT");
        if(webPort == null || webPort.isEmpty()) {
            webPort = "8080";
        }

        tomcat.setPort(Integer.valueOf(webPort));

        StandardContext ctx = (StandardContext) tomcat.addWebapp("/", new File(webappDirLocation).getAbsolutePath());
        System.out.println("configuring app with basedir: " + new File("./" + webappDirLocation).getAbsolutePath());

        // Declare an alternative location for your "WEB-INF/classes" dir
        // Servlet 3.0 annotation will work
        File additionWebInfClasses = new File("target/classes");
        WebResourceRoot resources = new StandardRoot(ctx);
        resources.addPreResources(new DirResourceSet(resources, "/WEB-INF/classes",
                additionWebInfClasses.getAbsolutePath(), "/"));
        ctx.setResources(resources);

        tomcat.start();
        tomcat.getServer().await();
    }
}

This does just what is enough to launch the server. The sample application contains a more complete version of code that handles temp directories and other things.

Add a Servlet

Create a file called HelloServlet.java in the src/main/java/servlet directory and put the following into it:

package servlet;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletOutputStream;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

@WebServlet(
        name = "MyServlet",
        urlPatterns = {"/hello"}
    )
public class HelloServlet extends HttpServlet {

    @Override
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
        ServletOutputStream out = resp.getOutputStream();
        out.write("hello heroku".getBytes());
        out.flush();
        out.close();
    }

}

This is simple Servlet that uses annotations to configure itself.

Add a JSP

Create a file called index.jsp in the src/main/webapp directory:

<html>
    <body>
        <h2>Hello Heroku!</h2>
    </body>
</html>

Run your application

To generate the start scripts simply run:

$ mvn package

And then simply run the script. On Mac and Linux, the command is:

$ sh target/bin/webapp

On Windows the command is:

C:/> target/bin/webapp.bat

That’s it. Your application should start up on port 8080. You can see the JSP at http://localhost:8080 and the servlet and http://localhost:8080/hello

Deploy your application to Heroku

Create a Procfile

You declare how you want your application executed in Procfile in the project root. Create this file with a single line:

web: sh target/bin/webapp

Learn more about procfile.

Deploy to Heroku

You can either deploy to Heroku by using the Heroku Maven plugin or you can deploy using Git. The latter is described in this article.

Commit your changes to Git:

$ git init
$ git add .
$ git commit -m "Ready to deploy"

Create the app:

$ heroku create
Creating high-lightning-129... done, stack is heroku-18
http://high-lightning-129.herokuapp.com/ | git@heroku.com:high-lightning-129.git
Git remote heroku added

Deploy your code:

$ git push heroku master
Counting objects: 227, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (117/117), done.
Writing objects: 100% (227/227), 101.06 KiB, done.
Total 227 (delta 99), reused 220 (delta 98)

-----> Heroku receiving push
-----> Java app detected
       ...
       [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
       [INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
       [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
       [INFO] Total time: 36.612s
       [INFO] Finished at: Tue Aug 30 04:03:02 UTC 2011
       [INFO] Final Memory: 19M/287M
       [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----> Discovering process types
       Procfile declares types -> web
-----> Compiled slug size is 62.7MB
-----> Launching... done, v5
       http://pure-window-800.herokuapp.com deployed to Heroku

Congratulations! Your web app should now be up and running on Heroku. Open it in your browser with:

$ heroku open

This will show your your JSP and then you can navigate to /hello to see your servlet.

Clone the source

If you want to skip the creation steps you can clone the finished sample:

$ git clone https://github.com/heroku/devcenter-embedded-tomcat

Keep reading

  • Java Advanced Topics

Feedback

Log in to submit feedback.

Warming Up a Java Process Customizing the JDK

Information & Support

  • Getting Started
  • Documentation
  • Changelog
  • Compliance Center
  • Training & Education
  • Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Support Channels
  • Status

Language Reference

  • Node.js
  • Ruby
  • Java
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Go
  • Scala
  • Clojure

Other Resources

  • Careers
  • Elements
  • Products
  • Pricing

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Your email address:

  • RSS
    • Dev Center Articles
    • Dev Center Changelog
    • Heroku Blog
    • Heroku News Blog
    • Heroku Engineering Blog
  • Heroku Podcasts
  • Twitter
    • Dev Center Articles
    • Dev Center Changelog
    • Heroku
    • Heroku Status
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Github
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
Heroku is acompany

 © Salesforce.com

  • heroku.com
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • Cookie Preferences