Is it possible to have Web & JPA & EJB in 1 project in Eclipse?

Question

I just finished a tutorial which was done in NetBeans. The tutorial created only 1 project which was a Web Application Project under Java Web category. The tutorial has 1 entity using JPA annotations, 1 Stateless Session EJB using JPA annotations, 1 Servlet calling the EJB, and 1 JSP calling the Servlet. So basically this 1 project has all 3 items: Web & JPA & EJB.

How can I have such a project in Eclipse?

When I work on Eclipse I get confused about how many projects I would need for a web application which uses JPA and EJB.
Should I create 3 projects 1 each for Web & JPA & EJB? OR
Should I create 2 projects 1 each for Web & EJB and include JPA in both?

Answer 1

Just create the "Dynamic Web Project" right away with a minimum version of 3.0.

Since Java EE 6 ("Web Profile") you indeed don't necessarily need to create a separate project for EJBs. You can then use a subset of the EJB API in the WAR, also known as "EJB Lite". You can then easily create a single no-interface EJB class with just a state annotation (Stateless, @Stateful or @Singleton) and you're already there.

You don't need the EJB facet for a "Dynamic Web Project". EJB Lite is basically already covered by the "Dynamic Web Project". There's not much IDE magic (wizards, code generators, etc) needed for EJBs anyway. You only need to make sure that the version is set to a minimum of 3.0 (from Servlet 3.0; part of Java EE 6), and that you set the target runtime to a real Java EE application server (even if it's only "Web Profile"), such as WildFly, TomEE, GlassFish, Liberty, etc and thus not a barebones servlet container like Tomcat or Jetty. This way the EJB annotations will be readily available in the project.

You don't even necessarily need to enable the JPA facet. You'll only miss the JPA-related wizards and code-generators under the project options. But you can just write all JPA-related code all by yourself and still get it to deploy. After all, an IDE is just like notepad, but then with millions of features trying to make you more comfortable while writing code. The project facets basically enable/disable the available project options/wizards/code-generators.