Can I serve JSPs from inside a JAR in lib, or is there a workaround?

Servlet 3.0 which Tomcat 7 supports includes the ability to package jsps into a jar.

You need to:

place your jsps in META-INF/resources directory of your jar

optionally include a web-fragment.xml in the META-INF directory of your jar

place the jar in WEB-INF/lib directory of your war

You should then be able to reference your jsps in your context. For example if you have a jsp META-INF/resources/test.jsp you should be able reference this at the root of your context as test.jsp

As a workaround, I created a class that opens up a jar file, finds files matching a certain pattern, and extracts those files to a given location relative to the context path.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.jar.JarEntry;
import java.util.jar.JarFile;

import javax.annotation.PostConstruct;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;

import org.springframework.util.AntPathMatcher;
import org.springframework.web.context.ServletContextAware;

/**
 * Allows extraction of contents of a JAR file. All files matching a given Ant path pattern will be extracted into a
 * specified path.
 */
public class JarFileResourcesExtractor implements ServletContextAware {

    private String resourcePathPattern;
    private String jarFile;
    private String destination;
    private ServletContext servletContext;
    private AntPathMatcher pathMatcher = new AntPathMatcher();

    /**
     * Creates a new instance of the JarFileResourcesExtractor
     * 
     * @param resourcePathPattern
     *            The Ant style path pattern (supports wildcards) of the resources files to extract
     * @param jarFile
     *            The jar file (located inside WEB-INF/lib) to search for resources
     * @param destination
     *            Target folder of the extracted resources. Relative to the context.
     */
    private JarFileResourcesExtractor(String resourcePathPattern, String jarFile, String destination) {
        this.resourcePathPattern = resourcePathPattern;
        this.jarFile = jarFile;
        this.destination = destination;
    }

    /** 
     * Extracts the resource files found in the specified jar file into the destination path
     * 
     * @throws IOException
     *             If an IO error occurs when reading the jar file
     * @throws FileNotFoundException
     *             If the jar file cannot be found
     */
    @PostConstruct
    public void extractFiles() throws IOException {
        try {
            String path = servletContext.getRealPath("/WEB-INF/lib/" + jarFile);
            JarFile jarFile = new JarFile(path);

            Enumeration<JarEntry> entries = jarFile.entries();
            while (entries.hasMoreElements()) {
                JarEntry entry = entries.nextElement();
                if (pathMatcher.match(resourcePathPattern, entry.getName())) {
                    String fileName = entry.getName().replaceFirst(".*\\/", "");
                    File destinationFolder = new File(servletContext.getRealPath(destination));
                    InputStream inputStream = jarFile.getInputStream(entry);
                    File materializedJsp = new File(destinationFolder, fileName);
                    FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(materializedJsp);
                    copyAndClose(inputStream, outputStream);
                }
            }

        }
        catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            throw new FileNotFoundException("Cannot find jar file in libs: " + jarFile);
        }
        catch (IOException e) {
            throw new IOException("IOException while moving resources.", e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void setServletContext(ServletContext servletContext) {
        this.servletContext = servletContext;
    }

    public static int IO_BUFFER_SIZE = 8192;

    private static void copyAndClose(InputStream in, OutputStream out) throws IOException {
        try {
            byte[] b = new byte[IO_BUFFER_SIZE];
            int read;
            while ((read = in.read(b)) != -1) {
                out.write(b, 0, read);
            }
        } finally {
            in.close();
            out.close();
        }
    }
}

And then I configure it as a bean in my Spring XML:

<bean id="jspSupport" class="se.waxwing.util.JarFileResourcesExtractor">
   <constructor-arg index="0" value="jsp/*.jsp"/>
   <constructor-arg index="1" value="myJarFile-1.1.0.jar"/>
   <constructor-arg index="2" value="WEB-INF/classes/jsp"/>
</bean>

It's not an optimal solution to a really annoying problem. The question now becomes, will the guy who maintains this code come and murder me while I sleep for doing this?

There is such workaround - you can precompile your JSPs into servlets. So you'll get .class files you can put into JAR and map in web.xml to some URLs.

Struts 2 team added a plugin for embedded JSP. Maybe it may be used ad a base.

https://struts.apache.org/plugins/embedded-jsp/

This is a follup to waxwing answer, which I've used becuase we used a server that could not do anything higher then servlet 2.5.

I added a method that removes the files added when the bean is destroyed.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.jar.JarEntry;
import java.util.jar.JarFile;

import javax.annotation.PostConstruct;
import javax.annotation.PreDestroy;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;

import org.springframework.util.AntPathMatcher;
import org.springframework.web.context.ServletContextAware;


import com.sap.tc.logging.Location;

/**
 * Allows extraction of contents of a JAR file. All files matching a given Ant path pattern will be extracted into a
 * specified path.
 * Copied from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5013917/can-i-serve-jsps-from-inside-a-jar-in-lib-or-is-there-a-workaround
 */
public class JarFileResourcesExtractor implements ServletContextAware {

    private final transient Location logger = Location.getLocation(JarFileResourcesExtractor.class);

    private String resourcePathPattern;
    private String jarFile;
    private String destination;
    private ServletContext servletContext;
    private AntPathMatcher pathMatcher = new AntPathMatcher();
    private List<File> listOfCopiedFiles = new ArrayList<File>();

    /**
     * Creates a new instance of the JarFileResourcesExtractor
     * 
     * @param resourcePathPattern
     *            The Ant style path pattern (supports wildcards) of the resources files to extract
     * @param jarFile
     *            The jar file (located inside WEB-INF/lib) to search for resources
     * @param destination
     *            Target folder of the extracted resources. Relative to the context.
     */
    public JarFileResourcesExtractor(String resourcePathPattern, String jarFile, String destination) {
        this.resourcePathPattern = resourcePathPattern;
        this.jarFile = jarFile;
        this.destination = destination;
    }


    @PreDestroy
    public void removeAddedFiles() throws IOException{
        logger.debugT("I removeAddedFiles()");
        for (File fileToRemove : listOfCopiedFiles) {
            if(fileToRemove.delete()){
                logger.debugT("Tagit bort filen " + fileToRemove.getAbsolutePath());
            }
        }
    }


    /** 
     * Extracts the resource files found in the specified jar file into the destination path
     * 
     * @throws IOException
     *             If an IO error occurs when reading the jar file
     * @throws FileNotFoundException
     *             If the jar file cannot be found
     */
    @PostConstruct
    public void extractFiles() throws IOException {
        try {
            String path = servletContext.getRealPath("/WEB-INF/lib/" + jarFile);
            JarFile jarFile = new JarFile(path);

            Enumeration<JarEntry> entries = jarFile.entries();
            while (entries.hasMoreElements()) {
                JarEntry entry = entries.nextElement();
                if (pathMatcher.match(resourcePathPattern, entry.getName())) {
                    String fileName = entry.getName().replaceFirst(".*\\/", "");
                    File destinationFolder = new File(servletContext.getRealPath(destination));
                    InputStream inputStream = jarFile.getInputStream(entry);
                    File materializedJsp = new File(destinationFolder, fileName);
                    listOfCopiedFiles.add(materializedJsp);
                    FileOutputStream outputStream = new FileOutputStream(materializedJsp);
                    copyAndClose(inputStream, outputStream);
                }
            }

        }
        catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            throw new FileNotFoundException("Cannot find jar file in libs: " + jarFile);
        }
        catch (IOException e) {
            throw new IOException("IOException while moving resources.", e);
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void setServletContext(ServletContext servletContext) {
        this.servletContext = servletContext;
    }

    public static int IO_BUFFER_SIZE = 8192;

    private static void copyAndClose(InputStream in, OutputStream out) throws IOException {
        try {
            byte[] b = new byte[IO_BUFFER_SIZE];
            int read;
            while ((read = in.read(b)) != -1) {
                out.write(b, 0, read);
            }
        } finally {
            in.close();
            out.close();
        }
    }
}

Then I did change the constructor so I could use all java configuration:

@Bean 
public JarFileResourcesExtractor jspSupport(){
    final JarFileResourcesExtractor extractor = new JarFileResourcesExtractor("WEB-INF/pages/*.jsp","myJarFile-1.1.0.jar","WEB-INF/pages" );
    return extractor;
}

I hope someone this helps someone!