Importing existing web applications

The IDE allows you to create web application projects from existing web application directories. This technique is useful for quickly creating template-based web application projects or for allowing the IDE to analyze existing web applications. You can use this with exploded web application archives or with any existing directory-based web applications.

1. The Workshop perspective must be active. If necessary, activate it by clicking the Workshop perspective button on the shortcut bar to the left of Eclipse's Workbench window.
2. Choose File > New > Dynamic Web Project from Existing Source.

The New Web Project dialog displays.

3. In the dialog, enter a name for your new project in the Project name field.
4. Click the Browse... button.

A folder browser displays.

5. In the folder browser dialog, select the project folder.

The only requirement on the project folder you select is that it should contain a WEB-INF folder that contains a valid web.xml file.

Note: The WEB-INF folder can be located directly in the project folder or in any of its subdirectories.

The parent folder containing the WEB-INF folder is assumed to be the Web Application Root folder. All JSP pages are expected to be in this Web Application Root folder or in any of its subdirectories.

If the project folder contains more than one WEB-INF folder, then a Web Application Root Folder dropdown displays, and you can select the application to import.

6. Click the Next button.

The Java Settings wizard page is displayed.
Make sure that the computed default values for your Java sources and libraries folders are correct.

7. Click the Finish button to create the project.

Workshop starts the web application analysis process. Depending on the size of your application, this operation may take a few seconds to a few minutes. Note that this is done only once when the project is created.

Creating a new web application project
Manage existing Java projects as web applications