Question

We’ve developed a small app using play!, and it runs standalone on a user’s computer (Windows XP or Windows 7), as the users don’t have network access. Currently, it runs within a console/command window. I would like to make it so there’s no console window in the taskbar where play is running–really, mostly because the users are prone to closing the the window. I came up with a couple of ideas, but I was hoping for some validation or other ideas.

First, I was thinking of running Java via javaw, which is typically what runs for GUI applications running Java–but what would I run? I guess I could run the Winstone Servlet container with the WAR output of play! (mentioned as a solution to the other stackoverflow question below).

Second, I was thinking of trying to wrap it in a windows service.

This question is similar, but slightly different (I don’t mind installing play!, which just involves unzipping the framework):
Deploy Play! application as executable jar

Has anyone used either of these techniques, or is there a better way? Pros/Cons/Examples?

Thanks!

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Update: Any comments about Winstone? It turns out that due to security constraints, we’ll not be able to [easily] create services or scheduled tasks (as SYSTEM). Thanks again.

Answer 1

I have done something similar for a few applications. The steps I carried out are

1. Create a bat file that launches the play app. This could be as simple as play run or play start
2. Create a scheduled task that executes on system startup, using SYSTEM as the user profile to run the command as.

This approach has been working on my internal systems for well over a year.