Installing and Configuring Tomcat
Deploying Web Applications to Tomcat
Once Tomcat is installed and running, let's look at the steps
necessary to deploy a web application. To deploy a web app, we need
to examine the directory structure of Tomcat. Table 5 describes the
directories that make up a Tomcat installation. It is assumed that the
value of TOMCAT_HOME precedes each of these
directories.
And because we are using a beta release of Tomcat, these
directories could change without notice.
Table 5. The Tomcat Directory Structure |
| /bin | This directory contains the startup and
shutdown scripts for both Windows and Linux.
|
| /conf | This directory contains the main
configuration files for Tomcat. The two most important are the
server.xml and the global
web.xml. |
| /server |
This directory contains the Tomcat Java Archive files. |
| /lib |
This directory contains Java Archive files that Tomcat is dependent upon. |
| /logs |
This directory contains Tomcat's log files. |
| /src | This directory contains the source code used
by the Tomcat server. Once Tomcat is released, it will probably
contain interfaces and abstract classes only. |
| /webapps | All web applications are deployed in this
directory; it contains the WAR file. |
| /work | This is the directory in which Tomcat will
place all servlets that are generated from JSPs. If you want to
see exactly how a particular JSP is interpreted, look in this
directory. |
We will examine most of these directories in future articles. For
the remainder of this article we're interested in the
/webapps directory, which is where all of our WAR files
will be deployed.
In our last article we described the contents of a web application
and how they are packaged. Once you have a WAR file, containing your
web application, deploying web applications to Tomcat is a simple
two-step process.
Steps Involved in Deploying a Web Application to Tomcat
Copy your WAR file to the TOMCAT_HOME/webapps
directory.
Add a new Context entry to the
TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml file, setting the values for
the path and docBase to the name of your web application.
<Context path="/onjava" docBase="onjava" debug="0"
reloadable="true" />
Restart Tomcat after completing these steps. Your application
should now be running.
The previously described application can be accessed by pointing
your browser at
http://localhost/onjava/
If you look at the TOMCAT_HOME/webapps directory, you
will see a new directory matching the name of your WAR file. This is
where your working web application now exists. When Tomcat starts it
will extract all WAR files that have been recently placed into the
TOMCAT_HOME/webapps directory.
In the next article we will learn how to add Servlets, JSPs, and
custom tag libraries to a web application. We will also discuss the
relationship between a web application and its
ServletContext.
James Goodwill
is the co-Founder of Virtuas Solutions, LLC, a Colorado-based
software consultancy.
Read more Using Tomcat columns.
Return to ONJava.com.