Creating our project

• Choose File | New | Project
• Select Java Enterprise
• Then tick the Web Application

If you have an application server setup, select or add it using New, I’m going to ultimately add an embedded Tomcat container, so leaving this blank.

Finally give the project a name, i.e. MyWebApp.

Adding a Maven pom.xml

I want to use Maven to import packages, so add a pom.xml to the project root add then supply the bare bones (as follows)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>MyWebApp</groupId>
    <artifactId>MyWebApp</artifactId>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <name />
    <version>MyWebApp.0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <description />

</project>

In IntelliJ, select the pom.xml, right mouse click and select Add as Maven project.

Next, we want to tell Maven how to compile and generate our war, so add the following after the description tag in the pom.xml

<build>
   <sourceDirectory>${basedir}/src</sourceDirectory>
   <outputDirectory>${basedir}/web/WEB-INF/classes</outputDirectory>
   <resources>
      <resource>
         <directory>${basedir}/src</directory>
         <excludes>
            <exclude>**/*.java</exclude>
         </excludes>
      </resource>
   </resources>
   <plugins>
      <plugin>
         <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
         <configuration>
            <webappDirectory>${basedir}/web</webappDirectory>
            <warSourceDirectory>${basedir}/web</warSourceDirectory>
         </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
         <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
         <configuration>
            <source>1.8</source>
            <target>1.8</target>
         </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
         <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
         <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
         <configuration>
            <source>8</source>
            <target>8</target>
         </configuration>
      </plugin>
   </plugins>
</build>

Creating a run configuration

Whilst my intention is to add a Tomcat embedded server, we can create a new run configuration at this point to test everything worked.

Select the Run, Edit Configuration option from the toolbar or Run | Edit Configuration and click + and add a Tomcat Server | Local.

Mine’s set with the URL http://localhost:8080/. Give the configuration a name and don’t forget to select the Deployment tab, press the + and then click Aritifact… I selected MyWebApp:war.

Press OK and OK again to finish the configuration and now you can run Tomcat locally and deploy the war.

Don’t forget to execute mvn install to build you war file.