What would be a suitable Start.main Java for hosting a site on Heroku?

[Franklin Oliveira]

I have a project on IntelliJ and GitHub repositories with Wicket and Spring Boot frameworks. I have already created a Start.main Java file with these sources in mind.

http://wicketinaction.com/2011/09/git-wicket-running-on-heroku/
https://github.com/dashorst/heroku-wicket-examples/commit/9a4b2b9273467c03b868ffa4537c4dc6e7475b30
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/java-webapp-runner
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/deploying-spring-boot-apps-to-heroku
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/github-integration
https://github.com/alexo/heroku-wicket-web-app

My so-far inadequate Start.main Java file is, as so:

package website.fgto.royals_of_britain;

import org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server;
import org.eclipse.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext;

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

        String webPort = System.getenv("PORT");

        if (webPort == null || webPort.isEmpty()) {
            webPort = "8080";
    }

        String webappDirLocation = "src/main/webapp/";

        Server server = new Server(Integer.valueOf(webPort));
        WebAppContext root = new WebAppContext();
        root.setContextPath("/");
        root.setDescriptor(webappDirLocation + "/WEB-INF/web.xml");
        root.setResourceBase(webappDirLocation);
        root.setParentLoaderPriority(true);

        server.setHandler(root);
        server.start();
        server.join();
    }
}

How then should I modify Start.main Java to meet the standards of my two frameworks and Heroku?

[Tim Holloway]

Welcome to the Ranch, Franlin!

Web applications do not have a start method.

Web applications are not continously-running programs, They are collections of service routines that get called by the application server (container) when a web request comes in.

[Franklin Oliveira]

That's interesting, Tim. I have a brother whose actually good enough at this stuff to have a paid job with it. He's helping me and he thinks a Start.main is necessary. Is there any issue with Heroku, Spring Boot and/or Wicket that may be causing the confusion?

[Tim Holloway]

On reflection, that may be a Spring Boot main class. Spring Boot runs as a standard Java application that launches an internal Tomcat - or, in this case, jetty webserver. So while the webapp has no main class or method, Spring Boot may. But the best place to ask about Spring Boot is probably the Spring forum. Let me see if I can cross-link this thread there.