Putting It In Context - Java

The default Tomcat installation comes with a folder named "webapps", which contains sample files. You can place your JSP documents here, or you can define new locations from which to serve JSP files. In Tomcat-lingo, these locations are known as "contexts", and they're defined in the "server.xml" file in the Tomcat CONF directory.

Let's suppose that you wanted to serve files from the location http://localhost/jsp/, The first thing to do is to define a context in the Tomcat "server.xml" configuration file.

<Context path="/jsp" docBase="webapps/jsp/" debug="0" reloadable="true">
</Context>

This maps the location /jsp to the "webapps/jsp" folder.

Next, create a directory named "jsp" in the "webapps" folder, place the "hello.jsp" script there, and restart Tomcat and Apache. You should see the new context when Tomcat starts up.

Context log: path="/examples" Adding context path="/examples"
docBase="webapps/examples"
Context log: path="/test" Adding context path="/test"
docBase="webapps/test"
Context log: path="/jsp" Adding context path="/jsp"  docBase="webapps/jsp/"

Now, when you point your browser to the URL http://localhost/jsp/hello.jsp, you should see the file being rendered correctly.

You can add as many contexts as you like, using the format above - however, these will always be one level below the server's document root. If you'd like to run JSP files from the document root itself, you should place them in the "webapps/ROOT" folder. For example, if the file "hello.jsp" was located in "webapps/ROOT", I would be able to access it via the URL http://localhost/hello.jsp.

If you're really picky, you can define an alternate location for the root folder by creating a new context - as the following example demonstrates:

<Context path="/" docBase="webapps/my/new/server/root" debug="0"
reloadable="true" >
</Context>

For more information on contexts, and how to tweak them for maximum performance, take a look at the Tomcat User Guide at http://jakarta.apache.org/

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