IntelliJ CE for Maven WebApps

IntelliJ Community Edition is a free and good IDE for plain old Java programming, and is also good for Android development. When it comes to enterprise/web development, the Ultimate Edition is the better choice if you can afford it. However, you can also do some simple Java web development using Maven and running your application server outside of IntelliJ. No doubt it's less integrated but you can at least breathe some life exploring more of IntelliJ.

Software used:

• Oracle JDK 7
• Maven v3.0.4
• IntelliJ Community Edition (CE) v12.0.1
• Apache Tomcat 7

Before starting, ensure that the M2_HOME environment variable has been set to point to your local Maven home folder.

IntelliJ Steps:

1. Enable on-the-fly compilation. Go to File > Settings > Compiler, check 'Use external build' and 'Make project automatically'.
2. Ensure the Maven plugin is enabled. Go to File > Settings > Plugins (under IDE Settings), item 'Maven Integration' should be checked. Restart the IDE if needed/prompted.
3. Create a new project. 
1. Go to File > New Project..., choose 'Maven Module' (under Java). Set the project location to the desired folder which will house your pom.xml file. Click 'Next' (proceed to create the folder if needed).
2. Check 'Create from archetype' and select 'maven-archetype-webapp'. Click 'Next'. Click 'Finish'.
4. At the right side of the IDE, there will be a button for 'Maven Projects'. Click it to bring up the Maven panel. From the panel, you can then run targets e.g. install, clean, package and check the dependencies.
5. At the right side of the IDE, there will be a button for 'Maven Projects'. Click it to bring up the Maven panel. From the panel, you can then run targets e.g. install, clean, package and check the dependencies.
   
   
6. Point the class files to the web application's WEB-INF/classes folder. Right-click the project root folder, select 'Open Module Settings'. At the 'Paths' tab, under 'Compile output', select/ensure 'Use module compile output path', and change the 'Output Path' to your project's 'src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes' folder*.
7. Add 'maven-dependency-plugin' plugin to copy dependency JARs to WEB-INF/lib folder. Add the following snippet to the pom.xml file (top-level):

   
    
     local
     
      
       
        maven-dependency-plugin
        
         
          install
          
           copy-dependencies
          
          
           ${basedir}/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib
          
         
        
       
      
     
    
   
   

8. This plugin will instruct Maven to copy all dependency JARs into the 'outputDirectory' path when executing the 'install' task when using profile 'local'. At the Maven panel, check 'local' under Profiles and right-click 'install' under Lifecycles, and select 'Run mavenweb [install]'. After running you should see the junit-3.8.1.jar in the WEB-INF/lib folder.
9. Add Tomcat webapp config file. This is to specify the Maven webapp folder to be loaded by Tomcat. The simplest:

10. Save the contents to the file @ [TOMCAT_HOME]\conf\Catalina\localhost\mavenweb.xml
11. Run Tomcat. You can use 'catalina start' command under [TOMCAT_HOME]\bin to fire up an instance. Then to test the web app, point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:8080/mavenweb/index.jsp. You should be greeted with a 'Hello World!'.

* I use the 'src' folder so that there's no need to run any Maven 'compile' task and Tomcat can detect a change and reload the webapp. But it's up to personal preference as this way will mean extra care to be taken to cleanup or ignore files for source control check-ins.

Final note

If you need to use a proxy to access the Internet, you can configure Maven to use it by right-clicking the project root folder, select 'Maven' > [Open/Create] settings.xml. Then add the proxy settings e.g.

    
        
            true
            http
            127.0.0.1
            8118
            proxyuser
            somepassword
            www.google.com|*.somewhere.com
        
    

Links:

• Maven - http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi
• IntelliJ Community Edition (CE) - http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/
• http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?100694-Maven-dependencies-to-lib-directory
• http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-proxies.html