Deploying Java webapp to Tomcat 8 running in Docker container

Question

I am pretty new to Tomcat and Docker - so I am probably missing a Tomcat fundamental somewhere in this question.

What I am trying to do is build a Docker container that runs a SpringBoot Restful web service that just returns some static data. This is all running on OSX so I am using Boot2Docker as well.

I've written my own Dockerfile to build the container that my app runs in:

FROM tomcat:8.0.20-jre8

RUN mkdir /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/myapp

COPY /1.0-SNAPSHOT/my-app-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/myapp/

This Dockerfile works fine and I am able to start the container from the created image.

docker build -t myapp .

docker run -it --rm -p 8888:8080 myapp

This container starts correctly and outputs no errors and displays the message saying my app was deployed.

22-Mar-2015 23:07:21.217 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory 
Deploying web application directory /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/myapp

The container also correctly has the myapp.war copied to the path described in the Dockerfile. Moreover I am able to navigate to Tomcat default page to confirm that Tomcat is running, I can also hit all the examples, etc.

To the problem, when I navigate to http://192.168.59.103:8888/myapp/getData I get a 404. I can't quite figure out why. Am I missing something regarding a .war deploy to Tomcat?

Solution 1

You are trying to copy the war file to a directory below webapps. The war file should be copied into the webapps directory.

Remove the mkdir command, and copy the war file like this:

COPY /1.0-SNAPSHOT/my-app-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/myapp.war

Tomcat will extract the war if autodeploy is turned on.

Solution 2

There's a oneliner for this one.

You can simply run,

docker run -v /1.0-SNAPSHOT/my-app-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war:/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/myapp.war -it -p 8080:8080 tomcat

This will copy the war file to webapps directory and get your app running in no time.

Solution 3

Tomcat will only extract the war which is copied to webapps directory. Change Dockerfile as below:

FROM tomcat:8.0.20-jre8
COPY /1.0-SNAPSHOT/my-app-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/myapp.war

You might need to access the url as below unless you have specified the webroot

http://192.168.59.103:8888/myapp/getData