Make Tomcat go

[paul wheaton]

On my computer I have a directory C:\www\richsoil
I installed tomcat and can bring up the default tomcat page.
I would like to be able to bring up a browser window and see the jsp at c:\www\richsoil\index.jsp
The last time I ever used tomcat was three years ago, so I'm grateful for the new web interface. But I must be missing an important step.
Any help?

[paul wheaton]

All I wanna do is develop JSP's locally. I read through docs and stuff and there must be some simple thing that I don't understand in the tomcat configuration.
Surely, somebody can see where I'm being a dope and can point it out.

[Michael Ernest]

Doing it the way you're doing it, are you just seeing the text of the file itself?

[Mark Spritzler]

I know you could configure Tomcat to use that directory. But Tomcat always had their Webapps directory for you to put all your web applications.
You could place your jsp file in the webapps directory. Make whatever directory structure you need or want. Remember to follow Sun's directory guidelines for Web application directories.
Mainly .html and jsp files in the web applications root directory. war files in the web-inf/lib class files in web-inf/classes and the web.xml in the WEB-INF/ directory,
So you could have
TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/richsoil directory
your .jsp file goes in this directory
now you can use http://localhost:8080/richsoil/index.jsp
for the other files, if you had them then you would create a WEB-INF directory from this directory, etc.
Mark

[jason adam]

If you are dead set on using that path, I believe in the server.xml file you need to create a context for you web app that points to the directory that is the "root".
http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-4.0-doc/config/context.html
If I was at home, I could give you a concrete example because I rarely put things in the default directory anymore, but the mind is blanking.

[paul wheaton]

So my error is in thinking that I can tell tomcat "if somebody wants 'richsoil', go get that stuff from that directory over there." Tomcat does not do that. Correct?
So I gotta move my development directory out of "C:\www" and into "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Tomcat 4.1\webapps". Ug.
Is there a way to tell Windows XP "if somebody looks for C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Tomcat 4.1\webapps\richsoil" you can find that stuff in C:\www\richsoil" ??

[paul wheaton]

Jason,
So if I wanna change the root, then I might sacrifice the tomcat admin page and their other stuff, right? There is no way to say "localhost" goes to the tomcat junk and "localhost/richsoil" goes to the other stuff. Or even better: "localhost:8080" goes to the tomcat stuff and "localhost:80" goes to my richsoil stuff. I would really like to get this to the point where I could be doing javaranch stuff on here too. So maybe localhost:80 could be javaranch and localhost:8000 could be richsoil ...

[jason adam]

You configure a Context for a specific web application, not for the server itself (thought that may be possible, not sure).
So you could have 3 or 4 different web applications, each in a completely directory structure, and still have Tomcat's initial admin page and all that.
I'll search the web for a bit to see if I can get you an example.

[jason adam]

Found a decent article that may help
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/07/31/tomcat.html
Notice the element
<Context path="/examples" docBase="examples" debug="0"
reloadable="true">
That says that when going to localhost:8080/examples, Tomcat will look in the TOMCAT_HOME/Webapps/examples directory. You wanted to have a completely different path, you can use an absolute path and specify something like
<Context path="/examples" docBase="D:/wwww/examples" debug="0"
reloadable="true">
The path attribute specifies the web app, docBase specifies the directory.
So I think you should be able to do something like
<Context path="/richsoil" docBase="D:/www/richsoil" debug="0"
reloadable="true">
Under the richsoil directory, you'd still need the standard web-app directory structure, and corresponding web.xml file.
[ September 19, 2003: Message edited by: jason adam ]

[Mark Spritzler]

Yes Jason is right, you can change the server.xml to specify directories for your Web apps without having to use Tomcats directories given to you free of charge.
Mark

[Mark Spritzler]

         <!-- Define properties for each web application.  This is only needed
             if you want to set non-default properties, or have web application
             document roots in places other than the virtual host's appBase
             directory.  -->
             
<DefaultContext reloadable="true"/>              
        <!-- Tomcat Root Context -->
        <!--
          <Context path="" docBase="ROOT" debug="0"/>
        -->
        <!-- Tomcat Manager Context -->
        <Context path="/manager" docBase="manager" 
         debug="0" privileged="true"/>
        <!-- Tomcat Examples Context -->
        <Context path="/examples" docBase="examples" debug="0"
                 reloadable="true">
          <Logger className="org.apache.catalina.logger.FileLogger"
                     prefix="localhost_examples_log." suffix=".txt"
          timestamp="true"/>
          <Ejb   name="ejb/EmplRecord" type="Entity"
                 home="com.wombat.empl.EmployeeRecordHome"
               remote="com.wombat.empl.EmployeeRecord"/>
          <!-- PersistentManager: Uncomment the section below to test Persistent 
       Sessions.
                         
               saveOnRestart: If true, all active sessions will be saved
                 to the Store when Catalina is shutdown, regardless of
                 other settings. All Sessions found in the Store will be 
                 loaded on startup. Sessions past their expiration are
                 ignored in both cases.
               maxActiveSessions: If 0 or greater, having too many active 
                 sessions will result in some being swapped out. minIdleSwap
                 limits this. -1 means unlimited sessions are allowed.
                 0 means sessions will almost always be swapped out after
                 use - this will be noticeably slow for your users.
               minIdleSwap: Sessions must be idle for at least this long
                 (in seconds) before they will be swapped out due to 
               maxActiveSessions. This avoids thrashing when the site is 
                 highly active. -1 or 0 means there is no minimum - sessions
                 can be swapped out at any time.
               maxIdleSwap: Sessions will be swapped out if idle for this
                 long (in seconds). If minIdleSwap is higher, then it will
                 override this. This isn't exact: it is checked periodically.
                 -1 means sessions won't be swapped out for this reason,
                 although they may be swapped out for maxActiveSessions.
                 If set to >= 0, guarantees that all sessions found in the
                 Store will be loaded on startup.
               maxIdleBackup: Sessions will be backed up (saved to the Store,
                 but left in active memory) if idle for this long (in seconds), 
                 and all sessions found in the Store will be loaded on startup.
                 If set to -1 sessions will not be backed up, 0 means they
                 should be backed up shortly after being used.
               To clear sessions from the Store, set maxActiveSessions, maxIdleSwap,
               and minIdleBackup all to -1, saveOnRestart to false, then restart 
               Catalina.
          -->
  <!--
          <Manager className="org.apache.catalina.session.PersistentManager"
              debug="0"
              saveOnRestart="true"
              maxActiveSessions="-1"
              minIdleSwap="-1"
              maxIdleSwap="-1"
              maxIdleBackup="-1">
                <Store className="org.apache.catalina.session.FileStore"/>
          </Manager> 

The above was taken from my server.xml which is in the TOMCAT_HOME\conf directory.

Context path="/examples" docBase="examples"

this looks like the place where you can put a complete path. It probably takes relative and complete paths. In the example above it is obviously a relative path, but you should be able to put in your "C:\directory"
Mark

[jason adam]

According to the documentation I read for the docBase attribute:
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.
[ September 19, 2003: Message edited by: jason adam ]