Java Server Pages

Example Web Application Overview

The examples for this book are packaged as a standard Java web application, as described in Chapter 2. This file structure is supported by all Servlet 2.2-compliant servers, so you can use the example application as a guide when you create your own web applications. How a web application is installed is not defined by the specification, however, so it varies between servers. With Tomcat, you simply copy the file structure to the special webapps directory and restart the server. To modify the configuration information for an application, you need to edit the application’s WEB-INF/web.xml file using a text editor. Other servers may offer special deployment tools that copy the files to where they belong and let you configure the application using a special tool, such as web-based forms.

If you look in the ora web application directory, you’ll see that it contains an index.htm l file and a number of directories corresponding to chapters in this book. These directories contain all the example JSP and HTML pages.

There’s also a WEB-INF directory with a web.xml file, a lib directory, a classes directory, and a tlds directory:

• The web.xml file contains configuration information for the example application in the format defined by the Servlet 2.2 specification. It’s too early to look at the contents of this file now; we will return to parts of it when needed.

• The lib and classes directories are standard directories, also defined by the Servlet 2.2 specification. ...