Deploy BuildVu with Tomcat

Table of contents

1. Download or Build the WAR file
   1. Download the WAR file
   2. Build the WAR file
2. Deploying the web app
3. Usage

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Download or Build the WAR file

Before getting started you need the WAR file which you can either download or build yourself.
This WAR file is required for the BuildVu service to work.

Download the WAR file

For trial users:

1. If you haven’t already, sign up for BuildVu trial.
2. Open the email you receive when you signed up.
3. Follow the download link found in the Docker section.

For customers:

1. Visit the Customer download page.
2. Click on ‘Download Latest Customer WAR’.
3. Submit your username and password.

Build the WAR file

Build a copy of our BuildVu Microservice Example project.
Instructions can be found on the GitHub page.

Deploying the web app

1. Download and install Tomcat. (Versions tested: 8.5.x, 9.0.x, 10.0.x)
2. Copy the built .war file into the apache-tomcat-x.x.x/webapps/ directory (apache-tomcat-x.x.x/webapps-javaee/ for Tomcat 10¹).
3. Tomcat will then automatically deploy the application upon startup, using the name of the .war file as the context path.
4. Outside the tomcat installation create a directory called docroot and two subdirectories inside it named input and output.
   • For example, your folder structure should look similar to:

           ┣━━ docroot  
           ┃   ┣━━ input  
           ┃   ┗━━ output  
           ┗━━ tomcat  
               ┣━━ webapps  
               ┗━━ <other tomcat files>  
     

5. Open a command line/terminal window and navigate to apache-tomcat-x.x.x and run the command bin/startup which will start the server on port 8080.
   • Check the RUNNING.txt file supplied with Tomcat for detailed instructions.
6. You can check if the web app has successfully deployed by navigating to its URL in your browser e.g. http://localhost:8080/buildvu-microservice. The page displayed should be blank white with BuildVu Microservice Example written in the centre.

¹ Tomcat 10 has moved from Java EE 8 to Jakarta EE 9. Upon startup Tomcat 10 will then automatically convert war files in webapps-javaee to a Jakarta web application and deploy it, using the name of the .war file as the context path.

Usage

You can interact with the BuildVu Microservice Example using the REST API (See the GitHub page for details).

For specific languages, see our tutorials.

Note: Viewing / downloading the converted output may not work on the first try - this is usually because Tomcat has not yet registered the new directories created by the web app. To fix this, simply restart your Tomcat server.