This service provides containers for the web components used by the Java EE applications.

JOnAS provides two implementations of this service: one for Jetty 6.x, one for Tomcat 6.x. It is necessary to run this service in order to use the JonasAdmin tool. A web container is created from a war file.

In development mode, as all other Java EE archives war archives can be deployed automatically as soon as they are copied under $JONAS_BASE/deploy and undeployed as soon as they has been removed from this location.

Here is the part of jonas.properties concerning the web service:

#
###################### JOnAS Web container service configuration
#
#  Set the name of the implementation class of the web container service.
jonas.service.web.class    org.ow2.jonas.web.tomcat6.Tomcat6Service
#jonas.service.web.class    org.ow2.jonas.web.jetty6.Jetty6Service

#  Set the XML deployment descriptors parsing mode for the WEB container
#  service (with or without validation).
jonas.service.web.parsingwithvalidation    true                          

#  If true, the onDemand feature is enabled. A proxy is listening on the http port and will make actions like starting or deploying applications.
#  The web container instance is started on another port number (that can be specified) but all access are proxified.
#  It means that the web container will be started only when a connection is done on the http port.
#  The .war file is also loaded upon request.
#  This feature cannot be enabled in production mode.
jonas.service.web.ondemand.enabled    true                               

#  The redirect port number is used to specify the port number of the http web container.
#  The proxy will listen on the http web container port and redirect all requests on this redirect port
#  0 means that a random port is used.
jonas.service.web.ondemand.redirectPort    0                             

For customizing the web service, it is possible to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<jonas-web-app xmlns="http://www.objectweb.org/jonas/ns"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.objectweb.org/jonas/ns
  http://www.objectweb.org/jonas/ns/jonas-web-app_5_1.xsd">

  ...
  
  <!-- Load this application on demand (if enabled in the webcontainer service) -->
  <on-demand>true</on-demand>
</jonas-web-app>