Using the WebLogic Maven Plug-In for Deployment

Using the WebLogic Maven plug-In for deployment is much easier and quicker than going through the WebLogic Server’s AdminServer and Oracle Documentation provides good examples how to do it.

In short, generating WebLogic Maven Plug-In contains following steps:

1. Build the plug-in JAR file using the WebLogic JarBuilder Tool (wljarbuilder) under MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/ with the following command:

java -jar wljarbuilder.jar -profile weblogic-maven-plugin

2. Extract the pom.xml file from weblogic-maven-plugin.jar under the MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib directory, and then copy the pom.xml file to MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib.

	
jar xvf MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic-maven-plugin.jar META-INF/maven/com.oracle.weblogic/weblogic-maven-plugin/pom.xml

in Linux:	
cp META-INF/maven/com.oracle.weblogic/weblogic-maven-plugin/pom.xml MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib

or in Windows:
copy META-INF/maven/com.oracle.weblogic/weblogic-maven-plugin/pom.xml MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib

3. Provision the weblogic-maven-plugin.jar in your local Maven repository with the following command.

mvn install:install-file -Dfile=MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/server/lib/weblogic-maven-plugin.jar -DpomFile=pom.xml

4. Done.

The Maven plug-in can be used e.g. from application’s POM file and be bound to some phase of the Maven life cycle. For example it can be bound to “install” phase and every time you run the “mvn install” command, the deployment plug-in is also called. In my opinion better way to use the plug-in is to add it as a profile so you can call it just when you want with command like “mvn clean install -Pdeploy-wls”.

Maven Project pom.xml File

<profile>
	<id>deploy-wls</id>
	<build>
		<plugins> 
			<plugin> 
				<groupId>com.oracle.weblogic</groupId>
				<artifactId>weblogic-maven-plugin</artifactId> 
				<version>10.3.6.0</version> 
				<configuration> 
					<adminurl>t3://localhost:7001</adminurl>
					<user>weblogic</user> 
					<password>weblogic123</password> 
					<upload>true</upload> 
					<targets>myServer</targets>
					<action>deploy</action> 
					<remote>false</remote> 
					<verbose>true</verbose> 
					<source>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}</source> 
					<name>${project.build.finalName}</name> 
				</configuration> 
				<executions> 
					<execution> 
						<phase>install</phase> 
						<goals> 
							<goal>deploy</goal> 
						</goals> 
					</execution> 
				</executions> 
			</plugin> 
		</plugins> 
	</build>
</profile>

The user credentials in the POM file are provided as clear-text but for more security you can use secure configuration authentication mechanism which stores the user name and password in encrypted form in an external file, and then uses it to supply the user credentials with which to connect to the WebLogic Server domain, along with the key that was used to encrypt the file.

Eclipse and Maven Console

Eclipse 3.7 Indigo has integrated Maven m2e plugin but is missing some expected functionality which was previously present in Sonatype releases by default. If you want your Maven Console to show something you must also install the optional “m2e – slf4j over logback logging” plugin.

When installing the m2e plugin there is an optional feature “m2e – slf4j over logback logging” which is needed for the Maven Console to work. Without it the plugin produces no output to Eclipse’s Maven Console view so that it is impossible to track plugin’s activity (background maven builds, source and javadoc downloads, etc).

There is a bug filed about it but it is resolved with comment “As a tool, m2e is not in the position to impose any specific slf4j logging backend on the host Eclipse installation.” That seems kinda strange as without the optional component the plugin is missing useful parts.

Just “Install new sofware > Indigo > Collaboration > “m2e – slf4j over logback logging (Optional)” and your Maven Console is back in business.