|
The Tomcat Project Type
If you start to create a new Java project, you'll see the new Tomcat project as
an option:
A Tomcat project is a Java project with the J2EE directory structure used in a
war-file.
We'll create such a project and call it
Tom1:
If you press the "Next" button you'll see this box:
The selection "Can update server.xml file" is important. Tomcat uses
this file from the
conf directory for various purposes. One of them is to locate projects that
are not placed in Tomcat's
webapps folder. By checking "Can update server.xml file" you allow
the plug-in to add the Eclipse projects to the
server.xml file. When we finish creating the
Tom1 project we can therefore find this line in
server.xml:
<Context path="/Tom1"
reloadable="true"
docBase="C:\eclipse3.04\workspace\Tom1"
workDir="C:\eclipse3.04\workspace\Tom1\work" />
The
path attribute is the name you use in the URL to address the application.
The
reloadable attribute chooses dynamic reloading of the application, and we'll
discuss this option further below.
DocBase tells Tomcat where to find the application, and
workDir is a location for servlets to use.
The
Tom1 project looks like this in Eclipse:
If you look in the Eclipse installation directory you'll see a matching
directory structure:
Files in the
Tom1 project should be placed in these folders:
|
html- and jsp-files
|
Tom1
|
|
Java source files
|
WEB-INF/src
|
|
Java class files
|
WEB-INF/classes
|
|
Jar-files
|
WEB-INF/lib
|
When Eclipse compiles a Java class it knows that it should be put in the
classes directory. This is actually a "property" of the project.
Right-click on the
Tom1 project and select Properties/Java Build Path/Source:
It's very important that the source folder and the output folder are set
correctly for a project. The source folder does not need to be the
WEB-INF/src folder, but the output folder must be
WEB-INF/classes since this is the J2EE standard. The reason for the
work folder also being set as a source folder is that Tomcat places the
servlet code generated from jsp-pages here.
New on the Java Boutique:
New Review:
Time Management Made Easy with the Quartz Enterprise Job Scheduler
Why not just use the Java timer API? This open source scheduling
API boasts simplicity, ease-of-integration, a well-rounded feature
set, and it's free!
New Applet:
Reverse Complement
Reverse Complement is a simple applet that converts DNA or RNA
sequences into three useful formats.
Elsewhere on internet.com:
WebDeveloper Java
Lots of Java information on webdeveloper.com
WDVL Java
Thorough Java resource at the Web Developer's Virtual Library.
ScriptSearch Java
Hundreds of free Java code files to download.
jGuru: Your View of the Java Universe
Customizable portal with online training, FAQs, regular news updates, and tutorials.
| 
