How to do it...

1. Open the gradle.build file and add the buildScript() function that accepts a closure containing all libraries needed to be referenced in classpath. At this step, we need to import gradle-tomcat-plugin under the group com.bmuschko:

buildscript { 
    repositories { 
        jcenter() 
    } 
    dependencies { 
        classpath 'com.bmuschko:gradle-tomcat-plugin:2.0' 
    } 
} 

1. Add the following libraries to the classpath:

apply plugin: 'com.bmuschko.tomcat' 
apply plugin: 'com.bmuschko.tomcat-base' 

1. (Optional) Add the following Tomcat 9.0 libraries that enable Gradle to run embedded Tomcat through the tomcatRun() and tomatRunWar() functions:

dependencies { 
    def tomcatVersion = '9.0.0.M9' 
    tomcat "org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed 
    core:${tomcatVersion}", 
    "org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed-logging- 
    juli:${tomcatVersion}" 
    tomcat("org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed- 
    jasper:${tomcatVersion}") { 
        exclude group: 'org.eclipse.jdt.core.compiler', 
             module: 'ecj' 
    } 
} 

1. (Optional) Configure Tomcat 9 details through the tomcat() function:

tomcat { 
    httpsPort = 8443 
    enableSSL = true 
    users { 
        user { 
            username = 'packt' 
            password = 'packt' 
            roles = ['manager-gui', 'manager-script'] 
        } 
    } 
} 

1. To deploy the project into the installed Tomcat 9, create a Gradle task deploy that copies the WAR file to the /webapp folder:

task deploy (dependsOn: war){ 
    copy { 
        from "build/libs" 
        into 
        "C:\MyFiles\Development\Servers\Tomcat9.0\webapps" 
        include "*.war" 
    } 
} 

1. You can now run deploy in the Gradle Task Launcher.