web-app outside WEB-INF in Tomcat

[Mohammad Ibrahim]

Hi friends,
The query is whether it's possible to place a web-app outside the WEB-INF directory of Tomcat or not..?? I was wondering if it's possible to place my web-app somwhere in my C:/ and somehow do some mapping and make my application run on Tomcat..

Thanks and Regards,
Mohammad Ibrahim

[Ben Souther]

Webapps never go in the WEB-INF directory to begin with.

The WEB-INF directory belongs in the root directory of the webapp.

Example:
{tomcat install}/webapps/myApp/WEB-INF/classes/..


If your question was "Can webapps reside in a directory other than the {tomcat install}/webapps directory?" then, yes.
Look a the docBase attribute of the Context element.
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/config/context.html

[Mohammad Ibrahim]

Hi Ben,
that's what I meant.. Thanks..

<Context path="/MyStruts"
reloadable="true" 
docBase="C:\Java\Tomcat Examples\Struts1"
workDir="C:\Java\Tomcat Examples\Struts1\work\org\apache\jsp" />

please tell me in which file should I keep the above code..???
is it context.xml..or the server.xml..or web.xml..or any other..???

Thanks,
mohammad ibrahim

[Christophe Verré]

It may depend on the version of Tomcat, but in 5.x you put it in :
$CATALINA_HOME/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/Struts1.xml
From: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.0-doc/config/context.html

For 4.x, it's in server.xml
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-4.0-doc/config/context.html