Interactive Use

After installation, you will have a new tool called tomcat-manager. Run this with no command line arguments to invoke an interactive, line-oriented command interpreter:

Use the exit or quit command to exit the interpreter and return to your operating system shell.

Built In Help

The interactive shell has a built-in list of all available commands:

As well as help for each command:

This document does not include detailed explanations of every command. It does show how to connect to a Tomcat server and deploy a war file, since there are quite a few options for both of those commands. For everything else, the built-in help should be sufficient.

Connect To A Tomcat Server

Before you can do anything to a Tomcat server, you need to enter the connection information, including the url and the authentication credentials. You can pass the connection information on the command line:

Or:

You can also enter this information into the interactive prompt:

Or:

Deploy applications

Tomcat applications are usually packaged as a WAR file, which is really just a zip file with a different extension. The deploy command sends a WAR file to the Tomcat server and tells it which URL to deploy that application at.

The WAR file can be located in one of two places: some path on the computer that is running Tomcat, or some path on the computer where the command line tomcat-manager program is running.

If the WAR file is located on the same server as Tomcat, we call that server. If the WAR file is located where tomcat-manager is running, we call that local. If the file is already on the server, then we have to tell Tomcat where to go find it. If it’s local, then we have to send the WAR file over the network so Tomcat can deploy it.

For all of these examples, lets assume I have a Tomcat server running far away in a data center somewhere, accessible at https://www.example.com. I’m running the command line tomcat-manager program on my laptop. We’ll also assume that we have already connected to the Tomcat server, using one of the methods just described in Connect To A Tomcat Server.

For our first example, let’s assume we have a WAR file already on our server, in /tmp/fancyapp.war. To deploy this WAR file to https://www.example.com/fancy:

Now let’s say I just compiled a WAR file on my laptop for an app called shiny. It’s saved at ~/src/shiny/dist/shinyv2.0.5.war. I’d like to deploy it to https://www.example.com/shiny:

Sometimes when you deploy a WAR you want to specify additional configuration information. You can do so by using a context file. The context file must reside on the same server where Tomcat is running.

This command will deploy the WAR file specified in the docBase attribute of the Context element so it’s available at https://www.example.com/sample.

Note

When deploying via context files, be aware of the following:

  • The path attribute of the Context element is ignored by the Tomcat Server when deploying from a context file.
  • If the Context element specifies a docBase attribute, it will be used even if you specify a war file on the command line.

Parallel Deployment

Tomcat supports a parallel deployment feature which allows multiple versions of the same WAR to be deployed simultaneously at the same URL. To utilize this feature, you need to deploy an application with a version string. The combination of path and version string uniquely identify the application.

Let’s revisit our shiny app. This time we will deploy with a version string:

Later today, I make a bug fix to ‘shiny’, and build version 2.0.6 of the app. Parallel deployment allows me to deploy two versions of that app at the same path, and Tomcat will migrate users to the new version over time as their sessions expire in version 2.0.5.

Once all the sessions have been migrated to version 2.0.6, I can undeploy version 2.0.5:

The following commands support the -v or --version option, which makes parallel deployment possible:

  • deploy
  • undeploy
  • start
  • stop
  • reload
  • sessions
  • expire

Readline Editing

You can edit current or previous commands using standard readline editing keys. If you aren’t familiar with readline, just know that you can use your arrow keys, home to move to the beginning of the line, end to move to the end of the line, and delete to forward delete characters.

Command History

Interactive mode keeps a command history, which you can navigate using the up and down arrow keys. and search the history of your commands with <control>+r.

You can view the list of previously issued commands:

And run a previous command by string search:

Or by number:

The history command has many other options, including the ability to save commands to a file and load commands from a file. Use help history to get the details.

Settings

The show or settings (they do exactly the same thing) commands display a list of settings which control the behavior of tomcat-manager:

You can change any of these settings using the set command:

Quotes around values are not required unless they contain spaces or other quotes.

Configuration File

tomcat-manager reads a user configuration file on startup. This file allows you to:

  • change settings on startup
  • define shortcuts for connecting to Tomcat servers

The location of the configuration file is different depending on your operating system. To see the location of the file:

You can edit the file from within tomcat-manager too. Well, it really just launches the editor of your choice, you know, the one specified in the editor setting. Do that by typing:

This file uses the INI file format. If you create a section called settings, you can set the values of any of the available settings. My config file contains:

[settings]
prompt='tm> '
debug=True
editor=/usr/local/bin/zile

Server Shortcuts

You can also use the configuration file to set up shortcuts to various Tomcat servers. Define a section named the shortcut, and then include a property for url, user, and password. Here’s a simple example:

[localhost]
url=http://localhost:8080/manager
user=ace
password=newenglandclamchowder

With this defined in your configuration file, you can now connect using the name of the shortcut:

If you define a user, but omit password, you will be prompted for it when you use the shortcut in the connect command.

Shell-style Output Redirection

Save the output of the list command to a file:

Search the output of the vminfo command:

Or the particularly useful:

Clipboard Integration

You can copy output to the clipboard by redirecting but not giving a filename:

You can also append output to the clipboard using a similar method:

Run shell commands

Use the shell or ! commands to execute operating system commands (how meta):

Of course tab completion works on shell commands.

Python Interpreter

You can launch a python interpreter:

As you can see, if you have connected to a Tomcat server, then you will have a self.tomcat object available. See Use from Python for more information about what you can do with this object.