How do I create a virtual directory in Tomcat 7? - java

Tomcat is installed at C:\tomcat7\ but I want to deploy .war files in C:\myapp\xyz. For example, I might have C:\myapps\xyz\MyApp.war and I should be able to reach it with the path http://localhost:8080/MyApp.
I tried appending this to the bottom of c:\tomcat7\conf\server.xml
<Host
name="myapp"
appBase="c:\myapps\xyz\"
unpackWARs="true"
autoDeploy="true">
</Host>
</Engine>
</Service>
</Server>
This doesn't seem to work though as I don't see MyApp listed in the management console and I am not able to hit the URL. What else do I need to do?
Also, slightly unrelated but, how can I not have the name of the war file tied to the context name or URL path? For example, I want http://localhost/coolName to point to C:\myapps\xyz\MyApp.war.

Unfortunately the way Tomcat loads a war by filename is a tricky limitation.
I use a slightly different & OS-specific approach: "Symbolic Links". This isn't a direct answer, but may help you out anyway.
Caveats:
I use Linux, but this is
also possible in Windows Vista &
Windows 7.
using wars is still awkward using this method.
Wars are zip files, so best to
unzip your war into a
version-named folder.
Solution:
Create symbolic links (like a Virtual Directory on the filesystem) from your myapps folder into the webapps folder.
This enables "coolName",
"coolName-v2", etc.
each webapp
could potentially be kept in
different places in the filesystem
You can easily 'roll back' or 'upgrade' just by removing and re-adding symbolic links to different targets (make sure to "stop" the webapp while switching)
Linux:
ln -s target_name link_name
Vista/Windows 7:
mklink link_name target_name
In this way, you can still use c:\tomcat7\webapps\ , but specify symbolic links as follows:
mklink c:\tomcat7\webapps\coolName\ c:\myapps\xyz\webapp123\
(Note: For wars, you'd need to unzip the war first)
HTH

Your right in that you want to set the appBase paramete of the Host entry. Here is a previous question that discusses what it takes under windows : Apache Tomcat under Windows: Changing webapps default directory
As for how to change name of the app add a context.xml in the META-INF directory: Separating war application name from war file name

Related

Tomcat, change name of deploy dir for war file

This may not be a difficult question, but I probably do not have the right terminology and am not finding the answer.
When I deploy a war file in Tomcat (7), say, myapp-1.0.war, a new directory, myapp-1.0, is created under webapps. Is there a way to change the name of the new directory? e.g. When I deploy myapp-1.0.war, the new directory is named myapp? Is this configurable inside the war file somehow?
I have implemented this by adding a symlink to the webapps directory and placing my war file in a directory outside of the appBase. This way I was able to standardize the docBase in the server.xml. Now all I have to do is update the symlink when new versions are posted (and maybe restart the server). My configuration is posted at another question:
Tomcat 7 symbolic link to war file

How to access folder in tomcat server using relative path of it?

I have one folder which has some PDF files which is used by my application, but when I include this folder in my war file , the size of war file increase to GBzz , so I thought of keeping this folder in some server location , build and deploy the war without the folder which will have the relative path of this folder , can any one help me on this? I am not sure how to do configuration for this to read the folder ?I am using tomcat server.
The easiest way starting from Tomcat 7 is to configure alias paths i.e. paths on the disk that will be aliased in Tomcat. Check this section in the guide for aliases attribute.
You want something like this in your server.xml:
<Context docBase="AppName" path="/appname" aliases="/pathPdf=c:\pdfs"/>
In case you're on an older Tomcat, your best bet is to setup a servlet that will serve files from the desired external location.

Deploy JSP webproject to tomcat [duplicate]

I have copied the sample.war file into the webapps directory of Tomcat, and I can access localhost:8080.
Now how will Tomcat deploy it, I mean do I need to open it in browser? How can I access the application?
You can access your application from: http://localhost:8080/sample
Deploying or redeploying of war files is automatic by default - after copying/overwriting the file sample.war, check your webapps folder for an extracted folder sample.
If it doesn't open properly, check the log files (e.g. tomcat/logs/catalina.out) for problems with deployment.
step-1. here I'm deploying pos.war First go to tomcat webapps folder and paste it
step-2. go to tomcat->bin folder start tomcat by clicking startup.bat
step-3. go to browser write localhost:port/project name eg. localhost:8080/pos (here my tomcat run on port 8080)
Done....
You just need to put your war file in webapps and then start your server.
it will get deployed.
otherwise you can also use tomcat manager a webfront to upload & deploy your war remotely.
Manual steps - Windows
Copy the .war file (E.g.: prj.war) to %CATALINA_HOME%\webapps ( E.g.: C:\tomcat\webapps )
Run %CATALINA_HOME%\bin\startup.bat
Your .war file will be extracted automatically to a folder that has the same name (without extension) (E.g.: prj)
Go to %CATALINA_HOME%\conf\server.xml and take the port for the HTTP protocol. <Connector port="8080" ... />. The default value is 8080.
Access the following URL:
[<protocol>://]localhost:<port>/folder/resourceName
(E.g.: localhost:8080/folder/resourceName)
Don't try to access the URL without the resourceName because it won't work if there is no file like index.html, or if there is no url pattern like "/" or "/*" in web.xml.
The available main paths are here: [<protocol>://]localhost:<port>/manager/html (E.g.: http://localhost:8080/manager/html) and they have true on the "Running" column.
Using the UI manager:
Go to [<protocol>://]localhost:<port>/manager/html/ (usually localhost:8080/manager/html/)
This is also achievable from [<protocol>://]localhost:<port> > Manager App)
If you get:
403 Access Denied
go to %CATALINA_HOME%\conf\tomcat-users.xml and check that you have enabled a line like this:
<user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1,manager-gui"/>
In the Deploy section, WAR file to deploy subsection, click on Browse....
Select the .war file (E.g.: prj.war) > click on Deploy.
In the Applications section, you can see the name of your project (E.g.: prj).
In addition to the ways already mentioned (dropping the war-file directly into the webapps-directory), if you have the Tomcat Manager -application installed, you can deploy war-files via browser too. To get to the manager, browse to the root of the server (in your case, localhost:8080), select "Tomcat Manager" (at this point, you need to know username and password for a Tomcat-user with "manager"-role, the users are defined in tomcat-users.xml in the conf-directory of the tomcat-installation). From the opening page, scroll downwards until you see the "Deploy"-part of the page, where you can click "browse" to select a WAR file to deploy from your local machine. After you've selected the file, click deploy. After a while the manager should inform you that the application has been deployed (and if everything went well, started).
Here's a longer how-to and other instructions from the Tomcat 7 documentation pages.
There are two ways:
Either you can do hot deployment (Hot deployment means deploying when server is running/up).
Or you can do cold deployment (Cold deployment means deploying when server is stopped).
Just use tomcat manager console for console deployment or simply copy and paste your application in webapp folder of your server's tomcat_home directory.
Note: Make sure if your war file size is more than 52 MB (the default configuration value),
you need to make two little changes in web.xml file of Manager application of your webapp folder(Manager application is provided by Apache tomcat by default upon installing the server).
Go to the web.xml of the manager application (for instance it could
be under /tomcat7/webapps/manager/WEB-INF/web.xml.
Increase the max-file-size and max-request-size values in web.xml file:
<multipart-config>
<!– 50MB max –>
<max-file-size>52428800</max-file-size>
<max-request-size>52428800</max-request-size>
<file-size-threshold>0</file-size-threshold>
</multipart-config>
Increase the size by putting the values for <max-file-size> and <max-request-size> according to your requirement.
This has been working for me:
Create your war file (mysite.war) locally.
Rename it locally to something besides .war, like mysite.www
With tomcat still running, upload mysite.www to webapps directory.
After it finishes uploading, delete the previous version mysite.war
List the directory, watching for the directory /mysite to disappear.
Rename mysite.www to be mysite.war
List the directory, watching for the new /mysite to be created.
If you try uploading the new file as a war file, with tomcat still running, it will attempt to expand it before it is all there. It will fail. Having failed, it will not try again. Thus, uploading a www file, then renaming it, allows the whole war file to be present before tomcat notices it.
Hint, don't forget to check that the war file's owner is tomcat (Use chown)
If you installed tomcat7 using apt-get in linux then, deploy your app to /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/
eg.
sudo service tomcat7 stop
mvn clean package
sudo cp target/DestroyTheWorldWithPeace.war /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/
#you might also want to make sure war file has permission (`777` not just `+x`)
sudo service tomcat7 start
Also, keep tailing the tomcat log so that you can verify that your app is actually making peace with tomcat.
tail -f /var/lib/tomcat7/logs/catalina.out
The deployed application should appear in http://172.16.35.155:8080/manager/html
For deploying the war file over tomcat,
Follow the below steps :
Stop the tomcat. powershell->services.msc->OK->Apache Tomcat 8.5->stop(on left hand side).
Put the .war file inside E:\Tomcat_Installation\webapps i.e. webapps folder i.e. put.war (put.war is just an example)
After starting the tomcat(to start tomcat powershell->services.msc->OK->Apache Tomcat
8.5->start )
you will get one folder inside E:\Tomcat_Installation\webapps**put**
In this way you can deploy your war file in Apache Tomcat.
1.Generate a war file from your application
2. open tomcat manager, go down the page
3. Click on browse to deploy the war.
4. choose your war file.
There you go!
The application name goes into the context of your tomcat deployed URL,
eg. http://localhost:Port/applicationName.
If your application name is simple then, it should be http://localhost:8080/sample.
By default, Port is 8080, but if you wish to change it, or want to know the port where tomcat is running, simply go to server.xml file in <tomcat-apache-dir>/conf/server.xml, there you can find port & change,
eg. <Connector port="8080" redirectPort="8443" connectionTimeout="20000" protocol="HTTP/1.1"/>
If anything goes wrong, check the log files (e.g. <tomcat-apache-dir>/logs/catalina.out)
Perform the following steps:
Stop the Tomcat
Right Click on Project and click on "Clean and Build"
Go to your project Directory and inside Dist Folder you will get war file that you copy on your tomcat
webApp Folder
Start the tomcat
automatic war file extract and run your project
I followed the instruction in the following link, it works for me.
http://www.coderanch.com/t/487178/Tomcat/war-file-show-load
Stop Tomcat
Delete all the logs in tomcat/logs and all files in tomcat/conf/Catalina/localhost
Remove the war file and the directory it created (if it did) from tomact/webapps
Start Tomcat
While watching the logs, copy the war file to the webapps directory again
After this, keep an eye on the catalina.xxxx-xx-xx.log to find out the issue.

Deploying war file to Tomcat with a different path

If I deploy a war file to Tomcat, called for example foo-bar-1.1.2.war, how can I deploy it so that it is extracted to webapps/bar and its URL root is /bar/...?
My intention here is to keep the war file in the webapps server with its version information so that I know which version is installed but have it overwrite a previous version of the app.
I could deploy the war file using PSI Probe. This would allow me to specify a target context for the web app. However, it means that I would lose any version information in the war file name.
Tomcat will always extract the contents of a war file, to a folder of the same name (when it's configured to deploy wars - as default etc.).
You can extract it to a folder name of your choice. So if you unzip the contents of foo.war to a folder called bar/ manually, instead of just dropping the war into the web apps folder, it'll still load the web application.
However, this is totally unnecessary as you can specify the URL pattern of the application without messing with the folder / war file name at all by overriding the context root element for your application:
This is often set in the Tomcat server.xml - but that practice is fairly widely discouraged. Instead, I'd suggest you use context.xml in the META-INF folder of your web application / war file:
<Context path="/bar" .../>
When the application is deployed, the context.xml should be copied to /conf/Catalina/localhost but renamed to foo.xml
Note that conext roots must be unique and there are some additional considerations if you're using the autoDeploy or deployOnStartup operations (Source http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/context.html).
Other options include:
Clean the web apps folder each deployment and drop your new foo-1.1.0 war in.
Include the version number in a flat file. foo/version1
Or simply include the version in a config / XML file.
You could also use Ant (or an equivalent tool) to automate your deployments (and perform any of the above).
There is an important point to emphasize about the path attribute of the context fragment definition. To cite the documentation on the topic:
When autoDeploy or deployOnStartup operations are performed by a Host, the name and context path of the web application are derived from the name(s) of the file(s) that define(s) the web application.
deployOnStartup is the default behavior of Tomcat hosts.
To follow the documentation, this has a very important consequence:
the context path may not be defined in a META-INF/context.xml
According to the ways of defining a Tomcat context, this lets only two solutions:
In individual files (with a ".xml" extension) in the $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ directory
Inside a Host element in the main conf/server.xml, which is a discouraged solution in a production environment as it requires restarting the server
Another solution takes advantage of the unpackWARs attribute.
In my point of view, for these reasons, the general and easy way to implement a subtle path in a production environment is taking advantage of the naming of war files (what could include versions management and be a solution to your problem). A single sharp (e.g. test#path.war) in the war file names implies a segment in the context path (e.g. /test/path). A double sharp introduces the version number (e.g. test#path##112.war). This works whether or not unpacking war files, hot deployment or not, is deployment agnostic (manager or file system) and manages multiples versions of a same archive.
But if there is the need to have a path distinct from the archive name, it seems the only solution is the descriptor in the /conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ directory or the server.xml file. For these, you need an access to the server filesystem.
The relevant solution is highly related to the way Tomcat is configured and managed in the everyday.
If you just want to include a version info in your war file name, you can name it like: my-app##1.2.3.war. It gets unpacked to the directory my-app##1.2.3 but the context will be just my-app (i.e. http://host/my-app/).
Works at least with Tomcat 7.0.55

Tomcat - making a project folder the web root

I have this folder under Tomcat webapps/mysite which is where all my JSPs and other things are located. To access this folder I go to http://blah.com/mysite and it works just fine. However (because of stylesheets and images statically connected to the root /) I have to make it so that when I go to http://blah.com/ it will load the stuff inside webapps/mysite.
I've tried many different things including contexts and setting the absolute path in server.xml... nothing seems to work, whenever I go to http://blah.com/ it still tries to load the ROOT folder... what's happening here?
The solution I use is to set this in your Tomcat server.xml
Add a <Context> element within the <Host> like below which sets your mysite as the default web app. Note the empty path="" which makes it the default.
<Context docBase="mysite" path="" />
Attributes of Context Container from the Tomcat docs:
docBase You may specify an absolute pathname for this directory or WAR file, or a pathname that is relative to the appBase directory
of the owning Host.
path All of the context paths within a particular Host must be unique. If you specify a context path of an empty string (""), you are
defining the default web application for this Host, which will process
all requests not assigned to other Contexts.
See others who have had similar question and the similar answer here, here and here
See also Apache Tomcat Configuration Reference - Context
There are a number of ways to make an application the root application. The simplest way is to just replace the contents of webapps/ROOT with the contents of your web application.
For other solutions, please see the following website:
http://wiki.apache.org/tomcat/HowTo#How_do_I_make_my_web_application_be_the_Tomcat_default_application_.3F
https://stackoverflow.com/users/1123501/george-siggouroglou 's awnser works but lacks a step.
delete ROOT and all items
copy the war to webapps as ROOT.war
Without the deletion, it may not work. Tested with docker.
You can rename your war from something.war == to ==> ROOT.war.
So, tomcat will unpack the war and will create the folder ROOT for it.
It is a trick that is working on tomcat 8 also.

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