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

You can set the path attribute of the <Context> element of your META-INF/context.xml.

Alternatively, you can configure maven to create the war artifact with a custom name:

<build>
    <plugins>
         <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <warName>yourCustomWarName</warName>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        ........
    </plugins>
</build>

Answer 2

I found an easy solution to keep war file name and choose the context-path.

You just have to deploy your war outside of the Host's appBase and to create a link inside the appBase directory.

Ex. :

ln -sf ${CATALINA_HOME}/wars/myapp-0.0.8-SNAPSHOT.war ${CATALINA_HOME}/webapps/myapp.war

Ektor

Answer 3

In your project there is a folder META-INF, in that folder there is a context.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context  path="/myproject" />

Answer 4

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 <finalName> over <warName> which is deprecated AFAIK):

   <project>
     ...
     <build>
       <finalName>mycontext</finalName>
       ...
     </build>
     ...
   </project>
   

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

   <project>
     ...
     <build>
       ...
       <plugins>
         ...
         <plugin>
           <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
           <artifactId>tomcat-maven-plugin</artifactId>
           <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
           <configuration>
             <path>/mycontext</path>
           </configuration>
         </plugin>
         ...
       </plugins>
       ...
     </build>
     ...
   </project>