Problem with web.xml file for Tomcat

[jason adam]

Not sure if this should be here or in the XML forum, so feel free to move it if need be.
I just loaded Tomcat today, gotten a couple of servlets to run just fine. However, I added some params to web.xml, to play with getting ServletConfig params. When I use the modified xml file, I can't even get localhost:8080 to pull up, get the 404 error. If I use the old xml file, things work fine. Here's the modified xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app
    PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
    "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>
ShowMsg
</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
ShowMsg
</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>
message
</param-name>
<param-value>
Ravnos
</param-value>
<param-name>
repeats
</param-name>
<param-value>
5
</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>
</web-app>

If you've read Core Servlets and JSP, then you should recognize this, it's pulled directly from the book, which is why I'm confused as to why this problem is occuring. Never done any xml stuff, so I have no idea where to begin.
Jason

[Allan Moster]

Did you try re-starting the server?

[jason adam]

Several times. I change to the old xml file, restart, things work great. I change to the modified web.xml, restart, get 404 errors for everything.

[Mike Curwen]

The problem is you can't have more than one name-value pair in <init-param>

From the DTD for web-app

<!--
The init-param element contains a name/value pair as an
initialization param of the servlet
Used in: filter, servlet
-->
<!ELEMENT init-param (param-name, param-value, description?)>

If you could have more than one mapping, there would be *'s beside param-name and param-value, but that wouldn't really make sense. How would you know which value went with which name?

So what you need is:

<init-param>
   <param-name>message</param-name>
   <param-value>Ravnos</param-value>
</init-param>   
<init-param>
   <param-name>repeats</param-name>
   <param-value>5</param-value>
</init-param>

[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Mike Curwen ]

[jason adam]

Ah, I must have overlooked that in their example, thanks Mike!!

[jason adam]

Excellent, works like a charm, thanks again!
Jason

[kelly goedert]

I'm having this problem and tried a lot of thing already, my web.xml file looks like this
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.2//EN" "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_2.dtd">
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>ShowMsg</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>coreservlets.ShowMessage</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>message</param-name>
<param-value>ahahahaha</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<param-name>repeats</param-name>
<param-value>5</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>

</web-app>
And it still doesn't work. Can anyone help?

[William Brogden]

"doesn't work" is not quite enough information to go on - there are so many things that can go wrong with a servlet, we need more clues.
1. How are you trying to address the servlet?
2. What happens next?
3. Do the Tomcat logs show any clues?
4. Does your servlet init() method do a
System.out.println("some message")
to verify that the servlet is even being called?
Bill