RESTful Java Web Services - Third Edition

Packaging JAX-RS applications with an Application subclass

The servlet 3.0 specification allows you to build a web application without web.xml. You will annotate the component as appropriate without describing them in web.xml. JAX-RS also follows the same model and allows you to annotate components for supplying the metadata required by the runtime, thereby avoiding deployment descriptors, such as web.xml, for holding the metadata.

In this packaging model, you will define a class that extends javax.ws.rs.core.Application. Your subclass will have entries for all the root resources and providers, such as filters, interceptors, message body readers/writers, and feature classes, that are used in the application. Additionally, this class can return ...