Deploy to WildFly using jboss-cli (Tech Tip #11)

WildFly provides multiple ways to deploy to your applications.

So far we’ve seen:

• Curl (Tech Tip #10)
• Maven plugin (Tech Tip #9)
• NetBeans (Tech Tip #6)
• JBoss Tools/Eclipse (Tech Tip #5)
• IntelliJ (Tech Tip #4)

This tip will cover the most likely way to deploy deploy applications to WildFly, i.e. jboss-cli.

jboss-cli is Command Line Interface management tool for a standalone server or a managed domain. It is available in the “bin” directory of unzipped WildFly distribution and allows a user to connect to a standalone server or domain controller and execute management operations.

“jboss-cli” can be used to deploy applications using the interactive console or in a non-interactive manner.

Lets look at interactive first:

• Use jboss-cli to connect with the existing standalone instance by giving the following command:

  jboss-cli.sh -c

  The -c switch connects using the default host (‘localhost’) and management port (‘9990’). These values are specified in ‘bin/jboss-cli.xml’ and can be updated.

  This opens up the “jboss-cli” interactive console and shows the following prompt:

  [standalone@localhost:9990 /]

  The prompt indicates that ‘jboss-cli’ is connected to a standalone instance’s management port.

• Deploy the application by giving the following command in console:

  deploy target/javaee7-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war

  The directory name of the war file in the command may be different depending upon how ‘jboss-cli’ was invoked. Verify the server log to ensure that the application was redeployed. Look for specific timestamp in the log entries.

  --force switch can be included in the command to replace the existing application.

• Verify the deployment status by typing the following command deployment-info in the console:

  deployment-info

  and see the output as:

  NAME                     RUNTIME-NAME             PERSISTENT ENABLED STATUS
  javaee7-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war javaee7-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war true       true    OK

  Verify the server log to ensure that the application was deployed. Look for specific timestamp in the log entries.

• Undeploy the application by giving the following command:

  undeploy javaee7-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war

• Type “exit” or “quit” to exit the interactive console.

Now lets look at how these commands can be issued non-interactively very easily.

• Deploy the application as:

  jboss-cli.sh --connect --command="deploy target/javaee7-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war --force"

• Verify the deployment status as:

  ./bin/jboss-cli.sh --connect --command=deployment-info

• Undeploy the application as:

  ./bin/jboss-cli.sh --connect --command="undeploy javaee7-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war"