Can I overlay one war with another?...serve /myapp/images/foo.gif from one of two wars?

[sboscarine]

I want to ship an asset, say /images/foo.gif in default.war.  I would like to deploy custom.war with /images/foo.gif and have it serve foo.gif from custom.war if the file exists, otherwise serve it from default.war. 

Is there a way to trick the container to serve the same path from 2 different wars?

Hello All,

I am seeking a way to allow customers to easily customize a war.  Surely I am not the first to try to address this.  There must be a more standard way of doing it than anything I would come up with.

Goals:

• Allow user to override any file we ship in a war, let's call it custom.war
• Allow user to upgrade our core product simply by deploying a newer version of default.war
• Have the server check custom.war first and default.war 2nd for any asset served.

I know I can do this at the Apache HTTP layer for static assets (which is my focus...allowing customers to brand their instance).  However, I can't guarantee that every user is using Apache.

I can also use the Maven Overlay feature, which inspired all this, but I don't want a customer to have to learn how to use Maven just because they want to to change their background color from blue to green or add some custom pages.  It's a perfect solution for scenarios where a consulting firm wants to do sophisticated customizations, but may be overkill for simple ones.

Thanks!

Steven

[ctomc]

Initial support for this was added in 7.2

there is no docs yet but you can check pull request https://github.com/jbossas/jboss-as/pull/2663

where you try to see how it works.

--

tomaz

[sboscarine]

Awesome, yet disappointing   This is a very cool feature and I am glad that you guys have added it..as well as some nice CLI enhancements slated for 7.2. 

I am a bit bummed because we're on EAP 6.0.1 and it is my understanding it will be awhile before a 7.2 release is available in the EAP line.