formal process for roo-ifying an existing maven web-app

[seanp33]

Is there a formal way to introduce an existing application to Roo? I have a web app originally created via maven-archetype-webapp. I would like to resurrect it using Roo but I find that I need to manually create various spring artifacts as I attempt to

roo> install

. For example, attempting to

roo> install web flow

I see

roo> install web flow                                               
Created SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/applicationContext-webflow.xml
Managed SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/applicationContext-webflow.xml
Created SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/foo-app-servlet.xml
Created SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/urlrewrite.xml
Created SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/jsp
Created SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp
Managed SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/web.xml
Undo manage SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/web.xml
Undo create SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp
Undo create SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/jsp
Undo create SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/urlrewrite.xml
Undo create SRC_MAIN_WEBAPP/WEB-INF/foo-app-servlet.xml
Undo manage SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/applicationContext-webflow.xml
Undo create SRC_MAIN_RESOURCES/META-INF/spring/applicationContext-webflow.xml
Unable to obtain required element '/web-app/filter-mapping[filter-name='httpMethodFilter']' from element '[web-app: null]'

This is leading me to believe that I'm doing something incorrectly - shouldn't Roo's install commands be creating these for me? Any ideas? Thanks

[seanp33]

So my workaround was to remove the existing web.xml and rerun roo>install web flow. Is this roo's expected behaviour? The presence of an existing web application conflicts with roo>install web flow?

[Stefan Schmidt]

@seanp33,

Roo ships with a preconfigured web.xml template. When it needs to manage the web.xml (add/edit/remove new elements) it does expect it's own web.xml. In this case it looks for the installed httpMethodFilter (which is needed for REST support in Spring MVC) and cannot find it.

I guess we can make this a little more lenient though.

-Stefan