Apex listener images deployement

Question

Hi
I installed the APEX listener recently. I have a question. Can I deploy the images in a different way other than jar them and then deploy to WLS. I have a lot of custom images/javascripts reside under the /i/ virtual path (e.g. /i/extjs). The images and javascripts change frequently. I guess that every time this happens I have to create a new i.war and redeploy which is not so convenient. Is there any other way to do that (e.g. copy them directly to a directory as I was doing with OHS/modplsql)
Thanx
George

Answer 1

Hi George,
you could do this by locating the directory where the WLS has unpacked the deployment to. But the more I think about this, the more I think you shouldn't do that, because staging etc. makes this very complex again.
Instead of deploying the images as war file, you could add a virutal directory mapping, which is far easier.
It should be possible to do that in the weblogic.xml of the apex.war (unpack the war, edit the file, repack the war, similar to what you'll do if you edit the web.xml, e.g. to change to config.dir parameter). See the [url http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13222_01/wls/docs81/webapp/weblogic_xml.html#1039396]corresponding part of the WLS documentation for details on that parmaeter. The result could be a weblogic.xml as follows
<weblogic-web-app xmlns="http://www.bea.com/ns/weblogic/weblogic-web-app">
<container-descriptor>
  <prefer-web-inf-classes>true</prefer-web-inf-classes>
</container-descriptor>
<virtual-directory-mapping>
  <local-path>/opt/oracle/apex/images</local-path>
  <url-pattern>/i/*</url-pattern>
</virtual-directory-mapping>
</weblogic-web-app>if your images are stored in */opt/oracle/apex/images* .
Not that this can cause node specific dependencies if you have a clustered WLS, and that you'll have to undeploy the i-application before you can redeploy the apex.war.
-Udo