Changing the Context Root of Web Applications

This article was originally posted in the SAP Community Network. I post it here with few changes that generalize it for all Eclipse WTP users.

Soon after the first steps in developing web applications with Eclipse WTP, developers often realize that the default context root of their applications is not exactly what they want. By default, the context root goes after the project name - if the name of your project is "HelloWorld" then it will be deployed with context root "/HelloWorld".

Changing the context root is a piece of cake. In this post we will see how you can do this in Eclipse WTP.

Setting the context root when creating a new web project

As described in the Web Tools Platform User Guide, when creating a new web application, you typically use the "New Dynamic Web Project" wizard. Instead of finishing it on the first wizard page, you should click on the Next button to advance to the "Web Module" wizard page. There you can set the context root of the application by modifying the value in the "Context root" text field. If you wish to deploy the application in the server's root then simply give "/" as context root.

Changing the context root of an existing web project

To change the context root of a web application that is already available in the Eclipse workspace, simply right-click on the web project and call the "Properties" action from the context menu. Then navigate to the "Web Project Settings" property page and you will find the text field where you can change the context root.

Depending on the server adapter you use, if your application is already deployed and started then you may need to redeploy it or restart it for the change to take effect. 

STS 3.0 and SAP NetWeaver Cloud

This article was originally posted in the SAP Community Network. 

One of the interesting news this week is the release of the Spring Tool Suite 3.0.0. In addition to the new features, the highlight is that the complete project is now available as open source software on GitHub under the Eclipse Public License. This is really great news for the Eclipse community! More details about this move can be found on the SpringSource Blog.

After reading this news, I was thrilled to try developing a Spring application with STS 3.0 and deploying it on my trial account in SAP NetWeaver Cloud. I went to the STS download site, grabbed a package and installed it. Then I followed the usual steps for installing the Eclipse Tools for SAP NetWeaver Cloud on top of STS. Since STS 3.0 is based on Eclipse 4.2, the Eclipse Tools for SAP NetWeaver Cloud must be installed from the Juno update site: https://tools.netweaver.ondemand.com/juno.

STS comes with a nice dashboard that brings you up to speed with the Spring technology. Luckily there is a nice example project "spring-mvc-showcase" that demonstrates the capabilities of the Spring MVC web framework through small, simple examples. Just a single click and the project was fetched from GitHub and installed in my Eclipse workspace.

The Maven Integration for Eclipse resolved all required libraries and the project was ready to deploy. I quickly got a functional Spring application, so I will skip any real Spring development for now.

Deploying it on the SAP NetWeaver Cloud required a few more clicks. I just called the "Run on Server" action from the project's context menu and deployed it successfully on the Local Test Server and on my trial account in SAP NetWeaver Cloud.

Trying out Spring with SAP NetWeaver Cloud was a really easy win for me!