Starting jetty with spring xml as a background process/thread - spring

Question

My goal is to set up a jetty test server and inject a custom servlet to test some REST classes in my project. I was able to launch the server with spring xml and run tests against that server. The issue I'm having is sometimes after the server started, the process stopped at the point before running the tests. It seems jetty didn't go to background. It works every time on my computer. But when I deployed to my CI server, it doesn't work. It also doesn't work when I'm on VPN. (Strange.)
The server should be completed initialized as when the tests stuck, I was able to access the server using a browser.
Here is my spring context xml:
....
<bean id="servletHolder" class="org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHolder">
<constructor-arg ref="courseApiServlet"/>
</bean>
<bean id="servletHandler" class="org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletContextHandler"/>
<!-- Adding the servlet holders to the handlers -->
<bean id="servletHandlerSetter" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject" ref="servletHandler"/>
<property name="targetMethod" value="addServlet"/>
<property name="arguments">
<list>
<ref bean="servletHolder"/>
<value>/*</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="httpTestServer" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop" depends-on="servletHandlerSetter">
<property name="connectors">
<list>
<bean class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.nio.SelectChannelConnector">
<property name="port" value="#{settings['webservice.server.port']}" />
</bean>
</list>
</property>
<property name="handler">
<ref bean="servletHandler" />
</property>
</bean>
Running latest Jetty 8.1.8 server and Spring 3.1.3. Any idea?

Answer 1

I figured it out. My bad. The IP address for the testing web server (jetty) that my REST client connect to is set to a internal IP address (not localhost) that only available to my local host. So that why the tests couldn't start when I'm on VPN or on CI server.
The xml is actually working and I think it is better than starting jetty in separate ant task. Because spring manage the jetty lifecycle. When the tests finish, spring will shutdown jetty automatically.

Answer 2

If you are using Maven, you can let the jetty-maven-plugin start and stop Jetty as part of your build process. You create your Spring project as usual, add the plugin to your .pom file. mvn jetty:run allows you to run the web app unassembled, and mvn jetty:run-war allows you to run a .war file. I guess that what you really want is to have Jetty started in the pre-integration test phase and stopped in the post integration test phase (ref):
<plugin>
<groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
<artifactId>jetty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<scanIntervalSeconds>10</scanIntervalSeconds>
<stopKey>foo</stopKey>
<stopPort>9999</stopPort>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>start-jetty</id>
<phase>pre-integration-test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>start</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<scanIntervalSeconds>0</scanIntervalSeconds>
<daemon>true</daemon>
</configuration>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>stop-jetty</id>
<phase>post-integration-test</phase>
<goals>
<goal>stop</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>