How to display Welcome JSP Page for a Web Application

[Sudharsan Ashwin]

I have created a dynamic web application project using Eclipse.

ProjectName : DownloadFromLink

When I run the entire project (Right Click on the DownloadFromLink project in the Project Explorere Window and Run on Server),
a page opens having the address as "http://localhost/DownloadFromLink/" and my welcome jsp page that I have listed in web.xml is not displayed.

How to resolve this issue?

[Pradeep Katipamula]

I am not sure on what port you have started the server. Just try adding a port number.

Pradeep

[Sudharsan Ashwin]

Yeah. I added that too. But still, it's not working.

Is it mandatory to add libarary files in WEB-INF/lib/ folder?

What should I do to display a page as my home page, as soon as i run the project?

[Sudharsan Ashwin]

When I run the project, the link displayed is this

http://localhost/DownloadFromLink/

and it shows an error like - org.apache.jasper.JasperException: An exception occurred processing JSP page /Downloadpdf.jsp at line 11"
line 11 is <f:view> tag

But, if I give the link as

http://localhost/DownloadFromLink/faces/Downloadpdf.jsp - the jsp is displayed and it works fine..

What is the problem?

[Tim Holloway]

The problem is that the web application uses the "faces" part of your URL as an indicator that the URL request should be routed to the FacesServlet. Only the FacesServlet knows how to do JSF. If you attempt to access a JSF view directly, you'll get an error.

The mapping of URLs containing "/faces/" to the FacesServlet is done in the web.xml file.

[Sudharsan Ashwin]

Is it fine, if I get that error? Or how to rectify it?

[Tim Holloway]

Sudharsan Ashwin wrote:Is it fine, if I get that error? Or how to rectify it?

No error is really "fine", but that's what is supposed to happen. A "fine" solution would make the jsp view file inaccessible via a URL, but we rarely are granted enough time to enforce things like that.

[Pradeep Katipamula]

I am not sure if you already have used the below but the welcome page mapping should be something like below

..
<welcome-file>faces/Downloadpdf.jsp</welcome-file>
..

This should solve your problem. Hope this helps.

Pradeep

[Tim Holloway]

I'm afraid that won't work. The welcome page is dispatched internally by the server. For Tomcat, at least (and that includes JBoss), welcome, error, and login pages don't get routed through the standard channels, and therefore the FacesServlet doesn't get invoked.

Instead, setup a standard JSP that forwards to the JSF welcome page. It's annoying, but it works.

[Sudharsan Ashwin]

I tried <jsp:forward> from a jsp page to jsf page.

But, still

http://localhost/DownloadFromLink/

displays exception - FacesContext not found.

[Pradeep Katipamula]

Tim Holloway wrote:I'm afraid that won't work.

I am currently using the same in one of our internal projects
But I am not sure with other servers. I will have to check out some time later.
Thanks anyways for your feedback

Pradeep

[Pradeep Katipamula]

BTW I am using weblogic server.