Define Servlet Context in WAR-File

Question

How can I tell e.g. Tomcat to use a specific context path when given my WAR-File?

Example: I have a war file created by maven build and the resulting name of the fil

Answer 1

There are two important points in the the documentation of the Context Container:

• In individual files (with a ".xml" extension) in the $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ directory. The name of the file (less the .xml extension) will be used as the context path. Multi-level context paths may be defined using #, e.g. foo#bar.xml for a context path of /foo/bar. The default web application may be defined by using a file called ROOT.xml.
• Only if a context file does not exist for the application in the $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/, in an individual file at /META-INF/context.xml inside the application files. If the web application is packaged as a WAR then /META-INF/context.xml will be copied to $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ and renamed to match the application's context path. Once this file exists, it will not be replaced if a new WAR with a newer /META-INF/context.xml is placed in the host's appBase.

So, when you bundle a META-INF/context.xml, the file gets renamed to the name of the WAR and this name becomes the context path, regardless of any path defined in the Context element.

I see thus two options here:

1. Either set the name of the generated war to a shorter name (I suggest using over which is deprecated AFAIK):

   
     ...
     
       mycontext
       ...
     
     ...
   
   

2. Or use the maven-tomcat-plugin for the deployment and set the context path in the plugin configuration:

   
     ...
     
       ...
       
         ...
         
           org.codehaus.mojo
           tomcat-maven-plugin
           1.0-SNAPSHOT
           
             /mycontext
           
         
         ...
       
       ...
     
     ...