Deploy extra WARs with your Grails App

Should you find yourself needing to deploy other web-app WARs with your Grails app, when you want the Grails app under development to run at the root context, this is for you.

This applies specifically to running the app on command line (grails run-app), as compared to packaged WARs; you would not need to do this in production for Jetty since Jetty applies the logic below already - we needed this to automate tests which spanned our app and its integration with another.

First off, if you haven't already deployed your Grails app to the root context, you should refer to this.

Now that you are running your grails app at the root context, you will need to find a suitable location (MY_OTHER_WARS below) to place any additional WARs so that the Grails startup can pick up on it.

This location is referenced in the $YOUR_PROJECT_HOME/scripts/Events.groovy where you will need to add the following

eventConfigureJetty = { Server server ->

   def grailsApp = server.handler
   server.removeHandler(grailsApp)

   def handlers = []
   handlers << grailsApp
   ContextHandlerCollection contextHandlerCollection = new ContextHandlerCollection()

   warProjects.each {
      WebAppContext otherWarWebContext = new WebAppContext("${basedir}/MY_OTHER_WARS/${it}.war", "/${it}")
      handlers << otherWarWebContext
   }

   handlers.each {
      contextHandlerCollection.addHandler(it)
   }

   server.setHandlers(contextHandlerCollection)
}

This ensures that when you start your application on the command line, the default mode of adding the grails app to the Jetty server is overridden with a Jetty ContextHandlerCollection.

The problem with not doing so and just adding more Handlers to the Jetty server means that Grails intercepts all contexts/URLs on the app, and will fail to pass the call for a context onto the appropriate other WAR.