Java Webservices using Netbeans and Tomcat

By: Emiley J in WebServices Tutorials on 2013-07-11

In this tutorial you will learn how to write a simple web service in Java using Netbeans IDE and deploy it to Tomcat.

If you have followed the steps in tutorial 1 and tutorial 2, you probably know how to develop java web service without using any IDE and to deploy using a standalone java application. However, that manual approach is not suitable for a production system or to develop complex web services. For developing advanced web services, you will have to use an IDE such as NetBeans and then deploy the web service in a Server such as GlassFish or Tomcat. In this tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to develop and deploy a simple webservice using Netbeans.

Open your Netbeans IDE and click on 'Tools->Plugins' and then click on 'Installed' tab. Scroll down and see if you can find these three plugins (Java EE Base, SOAP Web Services, RESTful Web Services)
If found just click 'Close'. If not found, then click on 'Available Plugins' Tab and search for 'Web Services'. You should then see these three web services. Select them and click 'Install'
Now create a new project. File->New Project and then select 'Java Web' and 'Web Application' and click 'Next'. In the server and settings, choose 'Apache Tomcat' in 'Server'. If you don't have any servers in the drop down, then click 'Add' and add the tomcat installation by specifying your tomcat installation folder'. Then click 'Finish'.
If you did not change the project name in the above step, then your project will be named 'WebApplication1'. In the Projects frame in the left, right click on the 'WebApplication1' and select 'New'->'Web Service'.
In the 'New Web Service' window, Type 'TimeServer' and in the package, type any package name. (Eg. com.javasamples) and click Finish
Under 'WebApplication1' expand the 'Source Packages' and com.javasamples and double click 'TimeServer.java'.
If the source tab is not selected, click source tab and then paste this code.

package com.javasamples;  // time server

import java.util.Date;
import javax.jws.WebService;
import javax.jws.WebMethod;


@WebService(serviceName = "TimeServer")
// more on this later
public class TimeServer {
    
    @WebMethod(operationName = "getTimeAsString")
    public String getTimeAsString() { return new Date().toString(); }
    @WebMethod(operationName = "getTimeAsElapsed")
    public long getTimeAsElapsed() { return new Date().getTime(); }

}