Pax Web Extender - War

Pax Web Extender WAR is an extender bundle that makes possible to deploy WAR files into OSGi.

How does it work

First you should have a war file compliant with Servlet specs. As the war file will have to be deployed as a bundle the war file must have the necessary OSGi manifest headers (take a look what is required and how you can easily add them). Once you have this preconditions you just have to deploy your bundle in your preferred OSGi framework. Of course, what you need more is that pax web extender war bundle to be installed together with an http service (preferred [Pax Web]).

Detailed way of working

Once installed the war extender will watch over the bundles that get started / stopped.
Once your war bundle gets deployed and started, the war extender will parse your web.xml and registers all elements with http service. If the http service is [Pax Web] then most likely that you will get a fully working web application. If the http service is a standard one some of the elements will not be registered as standard http service only supports servlets and resources.
Once your war bundle gets stopped all the prior registered elements will be unregistered.

Benefits

• with [no]/minimum modifications to your war you can deploy it into an osgi framework
• you do not depend on any OSGi api
• you do not have to keep track of http service availability
• you do not have to register/unregister your servlets/resources/filters/listeners
• easy to use

Other resources

• Pax Web Extender - War - Examples
• Pax Web Extender - War - FAQ
• Pax Web Extender - War - OSGi-fy
• Pax Web Extender - War - Supported Elements

Issue tracker

Issues, bugs, and feature requests can be submitted to the issue tracking system.

System requirements

• any OSGI R4 compilant framework
• (optional) any Http Service Implementation or [Pax Web] (if you need the full features)

Manual installation

• Download the latest version from http://repository.ops4j.org/maven2/org/ops4j/pax/web-extender/pax-web-ex-war/
  0.5.1
  0.5.0 0.4.0 0.3.0
• Deploy the downloaded bundle to your preferred OSGi framework

[Pax Runner] installation

  pax-run mvn:org.ops4j.pax.web-extender/pax-web-ex-war

Source code

https://scm.ops4j.org/repos/ops4j/projects/pax/web-extender/war ( or browse via FishEye )
This project builds with Apache Maven and uses Apache Felix's maven-bundle-plugin, and Peter Krien's bnd tool.