Getting Started

Jetty is distributed in an artifact that expands in a directory called $JETTY_HOME, which should not be modified.

Configuration for Jetty is typically done in a directory called $JETTY_BASE. There may be more than one $JETTY_BASE directories with different configurations.

Jetty supports the deployment of Jakarta EE {8,9,10,11} web applications, as well as the deployment of Jetty specific web applications, as discussed in this section.

For example, the following commands can be used to set up a $JETTY_BASE directory that supports deployment of Jakarta EE 11 *.war files and a clear-text HTTP connector:

The last command creates a $JETTY_BASE/start.d/ directory and other directories that contain the configuration of the server, including the $JETTY_BASE/webapps/ directory, in which Jakarta EE 11 *.war files can be deployed.

To deploy Jetty’s demo web applications, run this command:

Now you can start the Jetty server with:

Point your browser at http://localhost:8080 to see the demo web applications deployed in Jetty.

The Jetty server can be stopped with Ctrl+C in the terminal window.

The following sections will guide you in details about downloading, installing and starting Jetty, and deploying your web applications to Jetty.

Read the Jetty architecture section for more information about Jetty modules, $JETTY_HOME, $JETTY_BASE and how to customize and start Jetty.

The Jetty distribution is a file of the form jetty-home-<version>.<ext>, available for download from https://jetty.org/download.html

The Jetty distribution is available in both zip and gzip formats; download the one most appropriate for your system, typically zip for Windows and gzip for other operating systems.

After the download, unpacking Jetty will extract the files into a directory called jetty-home-<version>, where <version> is the version of Jetty that you downloaded. For example, installing Jetty 12.1.0-SNAPSHOT will create a directory called jetty-home-12.1.0-SNAPSHOT.

Unpack Jetty file into a convenient location, such as /opt. The rest of the instructions in this documentation will refer to this location as $JETTY_HOME, or ${jetty.home}.

If you are new to Jetty, you should read the Jetty architecture section to become familiar with the terms used in this documentation. Otherwise, you can jump to the section on starting Jetty.

Jetty as a standalone server has no graphical user interface; configuring and running the server is done from the command line.

First, create a $JETTY_BASE directory.

You will typically start Jetty by executing $JETTY_HOME/start.jar from this directory. However, if you try to start Jetty from an empty $JETTY_BASE, it will complain that you haven’t enabled any modules:

Jetty uses a module system to configure and assemble the server; these modules are enabled and configured in $JETTY_BASE. Since the $JETTY_BASE directory you just created is empty, Jetty has no configuration it can use to assemble the server.

You can explore what modules are available with the --list-modules flag:

Now try to enable the http module.

When Jetty enables the http module, it also automatically enables a number of transitive dependencies of the http module, such as the server module, the logging-jetty module, and so on.

You can now start Jetty:

Jetty is listening on port 8080 for clear-text HTTP/1.1 connections. But since it has no web applications deployed, it will just reply with 404 Not Found to every request.

Before you deploy your first web application, take a moment to see what happened to the $JETTY_BASE directory once you enabled the http module:

In the http.ini file you can find the following (among other contents):

Try changing the default port. Open http.ini, uncomment the line containing jetty.http.port=, and change its value to 9999:

If you restart Jetty, it will use this new value:

You can also specify the value of a module property when you start up Jetty. A property value specified on the command-line in this way will override the value configured in a module’s *.ini file.

For more detailed information about the Jetty start mechanism, you can read the Jetty start mechanism section.

Deployments of web applications in Jetty is detailed in this section.

Each web application is deployed to a specific environment, such as the old Java EE 8, or Jakarta EE 11, or Jetty specific environments.

Jetty supports simultaneous deployment of web applications each to a possibly different environment, for example an old Java EE 8 web application alongside a new Jakarta EE 11 web application.

In the following sections you can find simple examples of deployments of Jakarta EE 11 web applications.