How do I change frontend folder location and configure it in Vaadin14?

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How do I change the default frontend folder location in a maven Vaadin 14 project from ${project.basedir}/frontend to ${project.basedir}/src/main/frontend?

Also, Vaadin plugin outputs frontend folder in maven build output directory instead of the war exploded directory, where I would expect it to be.

How do it make it to work since I did not map this folder into my web.xml file?

How do I make it put frontend folder into the war archive and see which configuration it is using to make the compiled front end visible to my application?

vaadin14 vaadin-flow vaadin maven java
1 Answers

Vaadin uses the frontend folder differently in both dev and production modes. In production it builds the frontend using the build-frontend goal. Vaadin Maven Plugin don't have a proper documentation, the best place I found explaining what each goals do is here: https://vaadin.com/docs/v14/flow/production/tutorial-production-mode-advanced.html. This page explains that build-frontend is responsible for building and putting the frontend processed into WEB-INF\classes\META-INF\VAADIN\build when in production mode.

Dev mode is very different, development instructions explains that if you don't use an embedded server you should configure your IDE to run prepare-frontend goal before deployment: https://vaadin.com/docs/v14/flow/workflow/run-on-server-intellij.html. But prepare-frontend just creates the empty frontend folder into target, how does it find frontend files if the folder is empty and nothing is copied to the war exploded folder? Answer: when you run the application, Vaadin has a DevModeInitializer that creates the file generated-flow-imports.js into target/frontend, which refer directly to the project source files, so that any modifications made at them may be reflected immediately, and that's why there is no need of any configuration in web.xml or context listener.

Dev mode make kind of a hack with frontend folder to make development smoother, and prod mode compile everything from frontend into a minified file served by the Vaadin servlet, so only in prod mode frontend goes into the war file. In the first case, prepare-frontend must be used, in the second, build-frontend must be used also. So, in order to modify the frontend folder location, one must change the plugin configuration in those two goals:

<plugin>
    <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId>
    <artifactId>vaadin-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${vaadin.version}</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>prepare-frontend</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    <configuration>
        <frontendDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/main/frontend</frontendDirectory>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <!-- Production mode is activated using -Pproduction -->
        <id>production</id>
        <properties>
            <vaadin.productionMode>true</vaadin.productionMode>
        </properties>

        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId>
                <artifactId>flow-server-production-mode</artifactId>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>

        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>com.vaadin</groupId>
                    <artifactId>vaadin-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>build-frontend</goal>
                            </goals>
                            <phase>compile</phase>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                    <configuration>
                        <frontendDirectory>${project.basedir}/src/main/frontend</frontendDirectory>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>

That way, the modification will work in both dev and production mode.

user_36019950
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