How to continuously deploy changes in JSF project without restarting Tomcat?

Question

I have a JSF project in Eclipse. Now every time I make changes to the .xhtml files, I have to stop Tomcat server, and then start Tomcat server again. Is there any o

Answer 1

There are at least two changes you need to make when you need to develop a JSF project:

1. Tell Eclipse to automatically publish changes by changing the Tomcat settings as follows (doubleclick Tomcat server entry in Servers view to get this screen):

   

   It namely defaults to "Never publish automatically".

   ---

2. Tell JSF that the webapp is currently in development mode by adding the following to web.xml:

   <context-param>
       <param-name>javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE</param-name>
       <param-value>Development</param-value>
   </context-param>
   

   This will change some internal workings to make the developers easier such as disabling the Facelet cache and reloading resources. Don't forget to remove this when building a production release because this affects performance. This setting can alternatively also be set by JNDI.

   ---

The alternative is to migrate from the barebones Tomcat server to a normal JEE server such as WildFly, Payara, Liberty, etc. For them, the above described Eclipse setting is not necessary anymore and you can even live edit bean methods (on Tomcat, you'd still need to restart the whole server for them).

Answer 2

facelets.REFRESH_PERIOD: –
interval compiler checks for page changes – lower values useful during development

<context-param>  
<param-name>facelets.REFRESH_PERIOD</param-name>  
<param-value>2</param-value>  
</context-param>

      (or)

<context-param>  
<param-name>facelets.REFRESH_PERIOD</param-name>  
<param-value>1</param-value>  
</context-param>

• you can set any one of the above.
  change in web.xml
• set to -1 if you don't want to effect changes made.(default value)
• check this link.
  

Edit: as @BalusC told, above will work for jsf 1.x, For jsf 2.X change publishing settings and javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE in web.xml.