If you want to start a thread when your WAR is deployed, you can define a context listener within the web.xml:
<web-app>
<listener>
<listener-class>com.mypackage.MyServletContextListener</listener-class>
</listener>
</web-app>
Then implement that class something like:
public class MyServletContextListener implements ServletContextListener {
private MyThreadClass myThread = null;
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce) {
if ((myThread == null) || (!myThread.isAlive())) {
myThread = new MyThreadClass();
myThread.start();
}
}
public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent sce){
try {
myThread.doShutdown();
myThread.interrupt();
} catch (Exception ex) {
}
}
}