The War plugin is used to build web projects, and like any other plugin, it can be added to the build file by adding the following line:

apply plugin: 'war'

War plugin extends the Java plugin and helps to create the war archives. The war plugin automatically applies the Java plugin to the build file. During the build process, the plugin creates a war file instead of a jar file. The war plugin disables the jar task of the Java plugin and adds a default war archive task. By default, the content of the war file will be compiled classes from src/main/java; content from src/main/webapp and all the runtime dependencies. The content can be customized using the war closure as well.

In our example, we have created a simple servlet file to display the current date and time, a web.xml file and a build.gradle file. The project structure is displayed in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.1

The SimpleWebApp/build.gradle file has the following content:

apply plugin: 'war'

repositories {
  mavenCentral...