Professional Apache Tomcat 6

Chapter 7. Web Application Configuration

Web applications consist of static content (such as HTML pages and images files) as well as dynamic content (such as servlets, JSPs, and Java classes). Chapter 2 briefly discussed servlets and JSPs.

Although these Web applications usually are created by developers, they often require a system administrator to configure and deploy them, especially if the deployment is on a production machine. A systems administrator needs to know about a number of things in order to administer Web applications, such as the structure of a Web application and its configuration files.

This chapter describes the configuration-related issues for Web applications:

• The structure and content of a Web application

• The deployment descriptor for a Web application (that is, the web.xml configuration file)

Chapter 8 discusses other administrative activities for Web applications (for example, deploying, undeploying, and listing Web applications).

Understanding the Contents of a Web Application

Web applications are usually installed under the <TOMCAT_HOME>/webapps directory. The Servlet 2.5 specification requires that a certain basic directory structure be followed. Figure 7-1 shows a sample Web application structure.

The Web application is typically deployed in a directory named after the Web application. This name is also used in the Web application URL. For example, the sample Web application in Figure 7-1 is located in a directory called exampleapp, and can be accessed by the ...