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SAS^® AppDev Studio^™ 3.0 Developer's Site

Importing an Existing Web Application

You can "adopt" an existing Java-based Web application (for example, one that was not created with webAF), so that you can use the power of webAF to enhance and maintain it. To import a Web application, you start a new webAF Web application project as usual, specifying a new project directory. Then you can choose whether to copy the files from the existing external Web application to a location under the project directory, or just have the project directory refer to the existing location. The wizard will also let you add new features (such as SAS tag libraries) during the import, if you want (you can also do this later).

Import Considerations

Before starting the import, you should be aware of the following:

• When you create a new Web application project using an existing Web application, webAF will validate the ...\WEB-INF\web.xml file, if one exists. If any errors occur, an error dialog will be displayed, and you will not be able to complete the import until the web.xml file validates successfully. Note: It is entirely possible that a web.xml file for a "known working" Web application will fail validation. Typically this is because the servlet container does not validate the web.xml against the DTD, and may allow certain irregularities, such as having elements appear in other than the prescribed order. To help ensure portability to other servlet containers, webAF enforces web.xml compliance when importing and when building a WAR file. See Troubleshooting web.xml Errors for more information.

• During the import, the existing Web application will be examined to see if it meets the required specifications of webAF. If it does not (for example, if it follows an outdated version of the Servlet specification), it will be upgraded as needed.

• During the import, you will have the choice to copy the existing Web application to a location under the new project, or to just use the existing Web application in place. If you choose the latter, and if webAF makes any changes during the import, it will place backup copies of the original files in a subdirectory of the project directory called creation_backup. If you want your original Web application to remain un-modified, then you should choose to copy it to the new project location.

Using the Wizard to Create the Project and Import the Existing Files

To create a new webAF project for an existing Web application:

1. Use the webAF menu command File New, and enter the new Project name. Note: Do not set the Location field to your existing Web application location. In this step, you are only choosing the project directory location. Then click OK.
   

2. In Step 1 of the project wizard, select Use existing web application at specified location. Optionally, you can select the Copy existing web application to project directory check box, and then use the browse button to set the Web Application Location to the base (context) directory of your existing Web application (that is, the parent of your existing WEB-INF directory). Then click Next.

3. The Web Application Upgrade Summary page of the wizard will list any changes that will be made automatically to the existing Web application in order to conform to webAF standards. Click Next.
   

4. In the Select Web Application Template page of the wizard, select the template that best reflects the content you plan to add to your existing Web application. Note: If you want to enhance your project to include both the SAS tag libraries and the Struts tag libraries, select the Struts Framework Web Application template. You will be able to include the SAS tag libraries in the next step. If you don't want to make any changes at this time, select Blank Web Application. Click Next.
   

5. The Web Application Options page of the wizard lets you choose which tag libraries should be included by default in new JSP tag library pages that you create in the future for your project. Select or deselect options to meet your needs. Note: Since the SAS tag libraries depend on the SAS Runtime classes, you cannot de-select SAS Runtime Classes until both SAS tag libraries are de-selected. Click Next.
   

6. The Web Application Initial Content page of the wizard enables you to specify a new page to be the initial page for the Web application. Note: Depending on the options that you selected in the previous step, an additional page of options may be displayed before this page. If you do not want to add a new initial page, use CTRL + CLICK to deselect all options, as shown below. Then click Next.
   

7. The WebApp Project Options page of the wizard is used to specify any desired options that will be used when the browser is launched to access your Web application. If necessary, edit the content of the Invoke this URL with the "Execute in browser command" text field so that the correct initial page will be accessed. In the example below, the initial page is hello.jsp, located in the Web application base directory. Click Next.
   

8. On the Summary page, click Finish to complete the wizard, generate the new project files, and (if applicable) copy the existing Web application files to directories under the project directory.
   

Completing and Testing the Imported Web Application

After completing the steps above, webAF will open the editor to display the web.xml file contents. Complete the following steps to access the other files and to test your imported Web application:

1. Click on the Files tab at the bottom left of the Navigator view, and notice that only the web.xml file is listed. Although webAF copied your existing files to sub-directories of the project (assuming you chose to do so), it does not automatically include your source files in the project. To add these files to the project so that you can easily select and edit them in webAF, select Insert File Into Project. Then navigate to the directory (for example ...\webAF\Projects\MyImportWebApp\webapp) and select the file(s) you want (for example, index.jsp). Click OK.

2. Repeat the previous step for any other directories and source files. Note: It is important that you add all your Java source code files to the project, because only files included in the project will be compiled when you build the project or choose rebuild all. Even if you open a java file by selecting File Open, change it and save it, it will not be re-compiled when you build the project if it has not been explicitly added to the project.

3. Build the project by selecting Build Rebuild all. Check the Compile tab output in the bottom frame of webAF to ensure the build was successful.

4. To execute the Web application, first select Tools Services Start Java Web Server. Wait a few seconds for the server to initialize, and then click Execute in browser button. This should display the initial page of your Web application in the browser.