JAX-RS Maven project for WAS Liberty

So the other day I wrote this, apparently not a good approach these days. This is probably the official (current) way of creating a web app project. The following instructions are specific for WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile. Much of these information is based on the following sites/posts/answer:

• Blog post about Liberty and WebSockets
• StackOverflow answer that explains in detail how to write the pom.xml for web module 3.1
• StackOverflow answer that complements the previous one

Create a Maven project

This could be created manually, but Eclipse is good at this :)

1. File → New → Maven Project
   
2. Check Use default Workspace location
   Click next
   
3. Select the http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/websphere/wasdev/maven/repository Catalog
   Select the com.ibm.tools.archetype webapp-jee7-liberty
   Click next
   
4. Enter a Group Id: com.ibm.jp.myproject
   Enter a Artifact Id: myproject
   Enter Package: com.ibm.jp.myproject
   Click Finish
   

At this point we have created the project but it seems it is a bit broken. At written here we can get rid of the following error by modifying the pom.xml

ArtifactDescriptorException: Failed to read artifact descriptor for com.ibm.tools.target:was-liberty:pom:LATEST: VersionResolutionException: Failed to resolve version for com.ibm.tools.target:was-liberty:pom:LATEST: Could not find metadata com.ibm.tools.target:was-liberty/maven-metadata.xml in local (/Users/paulbastide/.m2/repository)

Modify the pom.xml

1. To get rid of above error add the following to pom.xml

   <repositories>
       <repository>
           <id>maven online</id>
           <name>maven repository</name>
           <url>https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/</url>
           </repository>
           <repository>
           <id>liberty maven online</id>
           <name>liberty maven repository</name>
           <url>http://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/websphere/wasdev/maven/repository/</url>
       </repository>
   </repositories>
   

2. Setup to use Dynamic Web Module 3.1 Add the following to pom.xml

   <plugin>
       <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
       <version>2.6</version>
       <configuration>
           <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
       </configuration>
   </plugin>
   

   also

   <dependency>
       <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
       <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
       <version>3.1.0</version>
       <scope>provided</scope>
   </dependency>
   

   Also we need to make sure 3.1 is setup properly in web.xml (For other versions check Katsumi Kokuzawa's Blog)

   <!DOCTYPE xml>
   <web-app version="3.1" xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
            xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee
                                http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd">
            
       <display-name>Servlet 3.1 Web Application</display-name>
   </web-app>
   

3. Setup to use Java 7 or 8 (needed for Dynamic Web Module 3.1)
   For Java 7

   <plugin>
       <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
       <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
       <version>3.3</version>
       <configuration>
           <source>1.7</source>
           <target>1.7</target>
       </configuration>
   </plugin>
   

   For Java 8 we need to use the 3.5.1 version of the plugin

   <plugin>
       <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
       <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
       <version>3.5.1</version>
       <configuration>
           <source>1.8</source>
           <target>1.8</target>
       </configuration>
   </plugin>
   

Update the project

After all the changes we just do right click in the project Maven → Update Project ...
If we check the Project Facets we should have

• Dynamic Web Module 3.1
• Java 1.8
• JAX-RS(Rest Web Services) 2.0

Here is a copy of the full pom.xml and web.xml files :)