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

Starting and stopping Tomcat

We have two choices: to start up Tomcat outside or inside Eclipse. The difference between the two is, that if we want to use Eclipse's debug features on jsp-pages or Java classes, Tomcat must be started inside Eclipse. Debugging is of course a very important feature, so let's see how we manage Tomcat from Eclipse. First some customization (I assume that the Java Perspective is selected):

Select Window/Customize Perspective and then mark the Tomcat checkbox to get Tomcat in the menu and in the tool bar:

The menu and tool bar now looks like this, giving you two ways to start, restart and stop Tomcat:

If you now start Tomcat, you'll see the output from the start up process in Eclipse's console:

Debugging jsp-pages

Having everything set up we're now ready to see how debugging works. We'll start with a simple jsp page:

In the browser we enter this URL:

http://localhost:8080/Tom1/hello.jsp

If everything has been set up correctly you should see this:

It's also possible to debug a jsp-page, but unfortunately the plug-in does not work at the jsp-page level, but rather at the servlet-level. From the jsp-file Tomcat has generated a Java- servlet and compiled it. The result is found in the work- directory. Right-click on this directory in Eclipse and do a Refresh:

You may now open the generated Java file and set a breakpoint:

The blue circle marks the breakpoint. Now do a refresh in your browser. This will open Eclipse's debug perspective, and processing will halt at the breakpoint:

Remember that changes to the servlet code while debugging is not reflected in the jsp-pages.

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