Deployables are archives (WAR, EAR, etc) that can be deployed in the container
Explanation
A Deployable class is a wrapper class around a physical archive. Deployable are constructed by directly instantiating them (e.g. new WAR(...) or new TomcatWAR(...)) or by using a DeployableFactory (e.g. DefaultDeployableFactory). There are 2 generic deployable classes:
o.c.c.c.deployable.WAR
o.c.c.c.deployable.EAR
There are also some container-specific deployables such as:
o.c.c.c.deployable.tomcat.TomcatWAR
o.c.c.c.deployable.jboss.JBossWAR
They are there to support container extensions to archives (for example, Tomcat supports context.xml files located in your WAR's META-INF directory, JBoss allows for a jboss-web.xml located in your WAR, etc).
The DeployableFactory interface offers a principal method for creating a Deployable: DeployableFactory.createDeployable(String containerId, String deployableLocation, DeployableType type). DeployableType can be DeployableType.WAR or DeployableType.EAR.
Once you have a Deployable instance wrapping your archive, you'll need to deploy it. This can be done either using Static Deployment or using Hot Deployment.
Example using the Java API
Deploying a WAR in Tomcat 5.x:
Container container = new Tomcat5xContainer(
new CatalinaStandalineConfiguration("target/tomcat5x"));
container.setHome("c:/apps/tomcat-5.0.29");
WAR war = new WAR("path/to/my.war");
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Example using the Generic API
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DeployableFactory factory = new DefaultDeployableFactory();
WAR war = factory.createDeployable("tomcat5x", "path/to/my.war",
DeployableType.WAR);