Thinking Inside a Bigger Box

Do you speak test? In that case: Hello web application:

public class WebIntegrationTest extends net.sourceforge.jwebunit.WebTestCase {

    public void testIndex() {
        beginAt("/index.html");
        assertTextPresent("Hello world");
    }

    private org.mortbay.jetty.Server server;

    protected void setUp() throws Exception {
        server = new org.mortbay.jetty.Server(0);
        server.addHandler(
                new org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext("src/main/webapp", "/my-context"));
        server.start();

        int actualPort = server.getConnectors()[0].getLocalPort();
        getTestContext().setBaseUrl("http://localhost:" + actualPort + "/my-context");
    }
}

This code runs with no application server, no separate deployment step, just like that.

If this looks interesting, see my full-sized article on java.net