Is there a way to Invoke a Servlet without having any Servlet Mapping Data in web.xml

[venki sheshgiri]

I'm seeing couple of Servlets getting called without a Servlet mapping element being present in Deployment Descriptor.

The url being hit is http://mydomain.com/Approot/Servlet/com.mycompay.mypackage.ServletClassName.

Can anyone explain me how is this possible ?

[Bear Bibeault]

That's a discredited way of doing things, and not to be used.

[venki sheshgiri]

Hi Bear Bibeault ,

Thanks for the clarifications was not aware of the thing called InvokerServlet.

I need couple of more inputs w.r.t this.

1) Is this InvokerServlet part of Servlet 2.3\2.4 Specification
2) Is it something specific to Tomcat (The servlets are getting invoked in Websphere also.).
3) Where exactly is this InvokerServlet mapping is done (any standard xml file read by Web Containers).

[William Brogden]

1. No - it was supposed to be a way for beginners to experiment rapidly without having to work with web.xml - turned out to have disastrous consequences when people tried to use it for serious work.
2. apparently not
3. see the "default" web.xml in the tomcat conf directory where it is commented out - tomcat5.5.9

  <!-- The "invoker" servlet, which executes anonymous servlet classes      -->
  <!-- that have not been defined in a web.xml file.  Traditionally, this   -->
  <!-- servlet is mapped to the URL pattern "/servlet/*", but you can map   -->
  <!-- it to other patterns as well.  The extra path info portion of such a -->
  <!-- request must be the fully qualified class name of a Java class that  -->
  <!-- implements Servlet (or extends HttpServlet), or the servlet name     -->
  <!-- of an existing servlet definition.     This servlet supports the     -->
  <!-- following initialization parameters (default values are in square    -->
  <!-- brackets):                                                           -->
  <!--                                                                      -->
  <!--   debug               Debugging detail level for messages logged     -->
  <!--                       by this servlet.  [0]                          -->

<!--
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>invoker</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>
          org.apache.catalina.servlets.InvokerServlet
        </servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>debug</param-name>
            <param-value>0</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
-->  
    <!-- The mapping for the invoker servlet -->
<!--
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>invoker</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/servlet/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
-->
 

Bill

[venki sheshgiri]

Hi William,

Thanks for the Info they were really Valuable.

Venki