deploying and ear as an exploded directory

[Max Habibi]

I'd like to deploy an ear on weblogic 8.1.4, then have weblogic automagically explode that ear into a working directory. Any suggestions?

thanks!
M

[Joel McNary]

We use Ant/Maven to do this. Pretty much after the script builds the .EAR/.WAR, we explode the files to a separate directory and then copy them to the Weblogic directory

  <j:set var="exploded.dir" value="${maven.build.dir}/ex"/>
  <j:set var="war.exploded.dir" value="${exploded.dir}/presentation"/>
  <j:set var="web.war" value="../tpsreporting-web\target\viewpoint-web"/>
  <j:set var="ejb.jar" value="../tpsreporting-server-ejb/target/tpsreporting-server-ejb-${pom.currentVersion}.jar"/>
  <j:set var="ejb.exploded.dir" value="${exploded.dir}/business"/>
 
  <ant:mkdir dir="${maven.build.dir}"/>
  <ant:mkdir dir="${exploded.dir}"/>
  <ant:mkdir dir="${ejb.exploded.dir}"/>
  <ant:mkdir dir="${war.exploded.dir}"/>
  <ant:mkdir dir="${tpsreporting.weblogic.exploded.home}"/>
 
  <echo>Copying exploded EJB JAR</echo>
  <util:available file="${ejb.jar}">
    <echo>${ejb.jar}</echo>
    <ant:unzip src="${ejb.jar}" dest="${ejb.exploded.dir}"/>
  </util:available>
 

  <echo>Copying exploded WEB WAR</echo>
  <util:available file="${web.war}">
    <echo>${web.war}</echo>
    <ant:copy todir="${war.exploded.dir}">
      <ant:fileset dir="${web.war}"/>
    </ant:copy>
  </util:available>
 
<!--Various dependencies go in here; copying files from dependant subprojects to the exploded.dir directory-->
 
  <echo>Deploying to Weblogic exploded location</echo>
  <echo>Exploded Location: ${tpsreporting.weblogic.exploded.home}</echo>
  <util:available file="${exploded.dir}">
    <ant:copy todir="${tpsreporting.weblogic.exploded.home}">
      <ant:fileset dir="${exploded.dir}"/>
    </ant:copy>
  </util:available>

I'm not sure if this helps you or not; I don't know of a way to get Weblogic itself to do this.

[Max Habibi]

Thanks Joel,

I was afraid of this: basically having to 'hand-write' an ant script. I was hoping there was an easy checkbox, somewhere, that would explode the directory for me. No such, it seems .

Anyway, thanks for taking the time for provide a detailed answer.

Happy Holidays!
M

[Christophe Grosjean]

Hi,

You can also look at

http://maven-explosion.sourceforge.net/

You can exploded you EAR file and any other containes artifacts.

[Roger Chung-Wee]

What we did a previous project was to have an Ant target which built an exploded directory structure, and another target which created an EAR file from that structure using the BEA-supplied wlpackage Ant task. Note: this only works in a split development directory structure.

We can deploy from either the directory or EAR file, but our policy is to deploy the EAR file in live. But for development, it can be useful (saves time) to deploy the exploded directory.