Question

i have a little problem and see no solution for it.
I need flexible ports for my tomcat. I want to set a port variable in a properties file and tomcat read this and start the server on this port. I know that tomcat can’t read from properties but he can read system variables/properties.
I build my project and tomcat with ant, this means the solution lies in ant.

server.xml

<Connector
    port="${tomcat.http.port}" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" ...
</Connector>

build.xml

<exec dir="${basedir}/tomcat/bin" executable="${basedir}/tomcat/bin/catalina.sh" failonerror="true" output="${basedir}/tomcat/logs/testrun.log">
    <arg value="start" />
</exec>

project.properties

tomcat.http.port=42

Answer 1

What I do, I have a server.xml tomcat file with placeholder properties in:

<Connector port="@http.port@" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
        connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="@https.port@" />

Then in my ant build.xml:

<copy todir="${dir.destination.config.tomcat}" filtering="true">
        <fileset dir="${dir.with.template.config.tomcat}"/>

        <filterset>
            <filter token="http.port" value="${http.port}"/>
            <filter token="https.port" value="${https.port}"/>
            <filter token="admin.port" value="${admin.port}"/>
            <filter token="control.port" value="${control.port}"/>
        </filterset>
    </copy>

And run your ant build with -Dhttp.port=42 or put that in a properties file loaded by ant.