tomcat-manager

If you use Apache Tomcat for any sort of development work you’ve probably deployed lots of applications to it. There are a bunch of ways to get your war files there, you can use the manager application in your browser, or you can use Cargo and its plugins for ant and maven. Here's a python script that can do it from the command line by talking to the web based manager application included with Tomcat.

Download and Install

Requires python 3.0 or newer. If you need python 2.x support, try the python2.x branch.

On OS X, *nix, or *BSD, put the script in ~/bin and rename it to tomcat-manager.

If you use Windows, rename it to tomcat-manager.py and put it in your path somewhere. See http://docs.python.org/3.3/using/windows.html for more details.

Tomcat Configuration

Prior to version 6.0.30, you need a user in tomcat-users.xml with access to the manager role. So you might have something like this:

<tomcat-users>
.....
	<role rolename="manager"/>
	<user username="admin" password="newenglandclamchowder" roles="manager"/>
</tomcat-users>

From 6.0.30 onwards, the roles required to use the web based manager application were changed from the single manager role to the following four roles:

• manager-gui
• manager-script
• manager-jmx
• manager-status

Therefore, in order to use the tomcat-manager script, you need a user in tomcat-users.xml with access to the manager-script role:

<tomcat-users>
.....
	<role rolename="manager-script"/>
	<user username="admin" password="newenglandclamchowder" roles="manager-script"/>
</tomcat-users>

Connecting to tomcat

When you use the web based manager application included with the tomcat distribution, you typically access it via the url http://localhost:8080/manager/html. This script requires a similar http connection, but the URL is different.

tomcat 6

If you can access the web based tomcat manager application at http://localhost:8080/manager/html, then you should use http://localhost:8080/manager for this script.

tomcat 7

If you can access the web based tomcat manager application at http://localhost:8080/manager/html, then you should use http://localhost:8080/manager/text for this script.

Usage

This script can either be used in command line mode or interactive mode. To use interactive mode you can do:

$ tomcat-manager
tomcat-manager> connect http://localhost:8080/manager/text admin newenglandclamchowder
tomcat-manager> list
Path                           Status  Sessions
------------------------------ ------- --------
/manager                       running 114     
/                              running 0       
/host-manager                  running 0
tomcat-manager> exit

Command line mode might look like:

$ tomcat-manager --user=admin --password=newenglandclamchowder http://localhost:8080/manager/text list
Path                           Status  Sessions
------------------------------ ------- --------
/manager                       running 117     
/                              running 0       
/host-manager                  running 0

To see all of the valid commands, use interactive mode, like this:

$ tomcat-manager
tomcat-manager> help

Documented commands (type help {command}):
========================================
EOF      deploy  help  quit    serverinfo  start  undeploy
connect  exit    list  reload  sessions    stop 

Miscellaneous help topics:
==========================
license  commandline

For help on a particular command:

$ tomcat-manager
tomcat-manager> help connect
usage: connect url [username] [password]
tomcat-manager>

Features

This script can perform all of the same functions that can be done with the web based tomcat-admin application included with tomcat. The following functions are available:

• serverinfo - give some information about the tomcat server, including JVM version, OS Architecture and version, and Tomcat version

• sessions - display active sessions for a particular tomcat application, with a breakdown of session inactivity by time

• list - show all applications running inside the tomcat server

• deploy - install a local war file in the tomcat server

• undeploy - stop execution of and remove a tomcat application from the tomcat server

• start - start a tomcat application that has already been deployed in the tomcat server

• stop - stop execution of a tomcat application but leave it deployed in the tomcat server

• reload - stop and start a tomcat application

• resources - show the JNDI resources configured in tomcat

There are a few commands that don't do anything to Tomcat, but are necessary for utilization of the script:

• connect - link to an instance of the tomcat manager by url, user and password

• help - get help about a particular command, including usage and parameters

• exit - if you are in interactive mode, exit back to the command line

License

Check the LICENSE file. It's the MIT License, which means you can do whatever you want, as long as you keep the copyright notice.