Task 1 - Create a skeleton Tapestry 5 project and run it.

Fire up Eclipse Ganymede and choose Java perspective. Make sure the eclipse is started up with JDK not JRE.

Select File/New/Other… from the Eclipse menu. In the dialog type maven in the Wizard's input field to reduce the number of wizards in the list. Select Maven Project.


In the New Maven Project dialog that appears next just click Next. Don’t get distracted by other options for now.


After clicking Next, you will see something similar like the image bellow.


In short - there are numerous so called archetypes (maven terminology for project templates) in the list which are identified by GroupId, ArtifactId and Version. Archetypes are “gathered” in catalogs and one of them is Nexus Indexer which includes all archetypes from the central maven repository.

If you don’t see any artifacts, then you don’t have central index downloaded or you haven’t chosen to include an optional component Maven Central repository index while installing m2eclipse plugin.

If you do see the artifacts, then you can skip the next two screenshots.

Check Software Updates and Add-ons in Help/Software updates… menu in Eclipse to confirm you have all the necessary components installed.

If you don’t have Maven Central repository index in the list of Installed Software, then select Available Software tab and install it by selecting this/these module(s) under Maven Integration for Eclipse Update Site.

To automatically download Nexus index (which includes Tapestry 5 archetypes) at Eclipse startup check Download repository index updates on startup in the Preferences.


Now let's continue. We are looking for Tapestry 5 archetype, so type tapestry in the Filter input field.


Select quickstart archetype, at present (December 2008) the version 5.0.18 is available. Click Next.

Now the New Maven Project Wizard displays a dialog which asks us about the name of the project. Name is not the right term in Maven world, but we will not go too deeply into theory for now, let’s just type org.driving for the GroupId and school for ArtifactId. Leave the Version as is.


Click Finish.

After a few moments you should see something very similar to the image below in the Package Explorer.

If you don’t have a Console View in your Java Perspective, please add it (Window/Show View/Console). Choose Maven Console.


Let’s stay focused. The task is to create a basic Tapestry 5 skeleton application and run it. Let’s do that!

Select Run Configurations… from the Run Menu Command.


This will open up the Run Configurations dialog. Locate and select Maven Build and then press the New button.


Now fill in the missing blanks in the next dialog. Name this Run Configuration with something meaningful, like Run Traffic School. The fill in the Base Directory by clicking the Browse Workspace button and selecting the school project. Type jetty:run for the Goal input field. Then click Run and wait for Maven to download all the necessary artifacts. This can take some time the first time, but the next time the Jetty will launch very quickly.


If all goes well, you should see something like this in the Maven Console:


Open your browser and type http://localhost:8080/school

You should see


You can click the refresh link and see the time changes – just to prove it works. You can stop the Jetty server by clicking on the red square in the Maven Console. This ends this task.

You learned how to create a new Tapestry 5 skeleton project by running New Maven Project wizard and how to run the Tapestry 5 web application by creating a maven run configuration.

Alternative approaches

You can create a Tapestry 5 skeleton project by running
mvn archetype:create
-DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.tapestry
-DarchetypeArtifactId=quickstart
-DgroupId=org.driving
-DartifactId=school
-DpackageName=org.driving.school

You can run the application with

mvn jetty:run or with mvn tomcat:run

You can also run the web application with WTP (Web Tools Project) by right clicking on a project and selecting Run As / Run on Server.

If you haven’t defined a server yet or even not downloaded one, then you have some more work to do. Choose the server (Tomcat 6.0 for example).


In the next step choose the directory of the Tomcat you have downloaded and unzipped to.


After clicking on Next, a dialog appears which shows which projects can be run on this Tomcat server.


Our project is already configured, so just click Finish. The Tapestry 5 project will be launched and first page displayed in the embedded browser inside Eclipse.


Running with Tomcat with WTP causes the Tomcat container to reload the context (by default) on any file change in the context path. This is sometimes not desirable as it hides the jewel of Tapestry – live class reloading. To be discussed in the next task.