Java(TM) Boutique - The Power of Three - Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts

Tutorials : The Power of Three - Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts :

Install Tomcat

The next step is to install a version of Tomcat. I've chosen the latest release, which currently is 5.0.16. Installation is as simple as Eclipse. You download a zip file and unzip it in a folder. On Windows you start Tomcat by opening a DOS window, and then run the startup bat-file from the bin directory. The environment variable JAVA_HOME must be set to the folder of your JDK, or the startup file will fail. I usually insert a line in the beginning of the startup file, and also the shutdown file, for example:

set JAVA_HOME=c:\j2sdk1.4.1_01

In order to be able to run the "admin" and "manager" programs in Tomcat you must define a user for this. Locate the tomcat-users.xml file in the conf folder, and insert this line:

<user username="admin" password="admin" roles="admin,manager"/>

Before proceeding you may want to start Tomcat to see if everything works. Run the startup bat-file from a DOS- window. This will bring up another DOS-window for Tomcat, and when it has completed initialization you'll see:

28-12-2003 13:10:40 org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina start
INFO: Server startup in 17005 ms

In a browser you may now enter

http://localhost:8080

which will show the Tomcat welcome page:

Install the Sysdeo Tomcat plug-in

Before installing the Tomcat plug-in you should stop Eclipse and Tomcat if they're already running.

There are a couple of Eclipse/Tomcat plug-ins available on the market. The most well-known, and the one we'll be using in this article, is the Sysdeo plug-in. The plug-in is available for several versions of Tomcat and Eclipse, and it's important to pick the one that matches your versions. For Eclipse 3.0M4 and Tomcat 5.0.16 you should use plug-in version 2.2.1. A complete list of all versions can be seen at this address: http://www.sysdeo.com/eclipse/tomcatPlugin.html. A release note file is available at http://www.sysdeo.com/eclipse/releaseNotesV221.txt, and you may find it useful to have a look at it, since it gives a feeling for the maturity and level of ambition for the sysdeo plug-in project.

The installation of the plug-in does not differ from other Eclipse plug-ins: After downloading the plug-in unzip it to Eclipse's "plug-ins" directory, and start Eclipse. It's possible to customize the use of the plug-in in various ways, which we'll see in the following. First of all you may verify that the plug-in has been installed by selecting Help/About/Plug-in Details from the menu (see the line at the bottom of this picture):

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