Glassfish 4.0 : “Hello world” application with Maven 3

The following steps will allow you to develop and deploy a first demo web-app with Glassfish Server 4.
1) To install Glassfish 4.0 follow the steps at http://glassfish.java.net/download.html
For example, you can get the zip version and extract into: C:\glassfish4.

2) If you´re working on a Windows Desktop Rename glassfish4/glassfish/bin asadmin to *.s to prevent the following Maven error:
Unable to start domain "domain1". IOException: Cannot run program"C:\glassfishv3\glassfish\bin\asadmin": CreateProcess error=193, %1 is not a valid Win32-Application

In this way The system will run asadmin.bat, instead of calling the Linux script (provided with no file extension by Glassfish).

3) On Eclipse install Glassfish plugin (https://marketplace.eclipse.org/content/glassfish-tools-kepler) to manage the server graphically. Otherwise you would not be able to installing with the command File>New>Other>Server> etc.
Starting Glassfish for the first time, you will have a user called “admin” with no password. You can manage Glassfish with Admin-Console available at: http://localhost:4848/ or even with asadmin CLI console (under C:\glassfish4\glassfish\bin).

4) To deploy your application using Maven, create the settings.xml file under the .m2 folder (for example, under Windows at the location: C:\Users\username\.m2), providing the glassfish profile credentials: they will automatically imported in the pom.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0" 
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
    <profiles>
        <profile>
            <id>glassfish-context</id>
            <properties>
                <local.glassfish.home>C:\\glassfish4\\glassfish</local.glassfish.home>
                <local.glassfish.user>admin</local.glassfish.user>
                <local.glassfish.domain>domain1</local.glassfish.domain>
                <local.glassfish.passfile>
            ${local.glassfish.home}\\domains\\${local.glassfish.domain}\\config\\domain-passwords
                </local.glassfish.passfile>
            </properties>
        </profile>
    </profiles>
 
    <activeProfiles>
        <activeProfile>glassfish-context</activeProfile>
    </activeProfiles>
</settings>

5) Create a new Maven project with the maven archetype “maven-archetype-webapp” template. As a default you can already find the index.jsp HelloWorld page.

6) Add the following plugins to the pom.xml:

…
<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
				<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>3.1</version>
				<configuration>
					<source>1.7</source>
					<target>1.7</target>
				</configuration>
			</plugin>

			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
				<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>2.1.1</version>
				<configuration>
					<failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
					<!-- <webXml>src\main\webapp\WEB-INF\web.xml</webXml> -->
				</configuration>
			</plugin>

			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.glassfish.maven.plugin</groupId>
				<artifactId>maven-glassfish-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>2.1</version>
				<configuration>
				<glassfishDirectory>${local.glassfish.home}</glassfishDirectory>
					<user>admin</user>
					<passwordFile>${local.glassfish.passfile}</passwordFile>
					<domain>
						<name>domain1</name>
						<httpPort>8080</httpPort>
						<adminPort>4848</adminPort>
					</domain>
					<components>
						<component>
							<name>${project.artifactId}</name>
					<artifact>target/${project.build.finalName}.war</artifact>
						</component>
					</components>
					<debug>true</debug>
					<terse>false</terse>
					<echo>true</echo>
				</configuration>
			</plugin>

		</plugins>
		<finalName>Glassfish_HelloWorld</finalName>
	</build>
</project>

7) Launch the maven command:
clean package glassfish:deploy

You may find errors related to the Dynamic Web Module in the Eclipse project, even if the maven gives you “BUILD SUCCESS”. For now it´s ok.

With the given pom.xml the application will be deployed into:
C:\glassfish4\glassfish\domains\domain1\applications

You can see it up and running at: http://localhost:8080/Glassfish_HelloWorld/

You can manage the applications, for example editing the Content Root folder, directly in the administration console.

Demo Code available at:
http://sourceforge.net/p/mavendemo/code/HEAD/tree/GlassfishHelloWorld/