Tomcat url redirect problem

[Ankush Bhargava]

I am using httpd with tomcat and mod_jk

My webapp url is something like:
http://localhost:8080/myapp
- which picks up the JSP from /home/webapps/myapp

But when someone else a url such as
http://localhost:8080/myapp/assets/1.gif, or
http://localhost:8080/myapp/assets/2.jpg
- I want tomcat to retrieve the gif from a different directory on the server -
/usr/share/my_images/1.gif and
/usr/share/my_images/2.jpg

To do this, i created a file called myapp#assets.xml, and placed it in
/usr/share/tomcat6/conf/Catalina/localhost
The content of myapp#assets.xml are -
<Context docbase="/usr/share/my_images/" path="/assets/*"></Context>

But this is not working, and the server just does not find http://localhost:8080/myapp/assets/1.gif.
What am i doing wrong?

[Travis Hein]

This sounds like the JKAutoAlias apache directive for mod_jk.. see also : http://tomcat.apache.org/connectors-doc/reference/apache.html

i think when you set up the assets like that, to mean that mod_jk would allow apache to fetch the files instead of invoking tomcat, that you no longer can hit tomcat (e.g. you said going to ..:8080/....gif wasn't working.. So, wouldn't that be the direct to tomcat mode,

does, going through apache localhost:80/myapp/assets/... work ?

[Ankush Bhargava]

Thanks.

Eventually what i ended up doing is -
1. unmount the folder

     JkUnMount /myapp/assets ajp13 
     JkUnMount /myapp/assets/* ajp13

2. create alias in httpd to redirect urls to the specific directory

     Alias /myapp/assets/ /usr/share/sitedata/ 
     <Directory /usr/share/sitedata> 
      Order allow,deny 
      Allow from all 
     </Directory> 

This seems to work :-)