A web-application is a collection of resources such as jsps, servlets, html files, images, etc. which are mapped to a specific "URI" prefix.

For example, all the resources related to baseball can be assembled into a "baseball" directory and correspondingly all the requests that start with "/baseball" can be mapped to this application.

A new application can be added to Tomcat by editing server.xml file. To add "baseball" application you can make the following additions to the file (at the appropriate place):

<Context path="/baseball"

docBase="baseball"

defaultSessionTimeOut="30"

isWARExpanded="true"

isWARValidated="false"

isInvokerEnabled="true"

isWorkDirPersistent="false />;

Please read "server.xml" for more details.

a) To install servlets within a web-application, you can do the following:

• Once a servlet has been compiled, it can be added to Tomcat by: determine which "web application" context you'd like to add the servlet to add the servlet class file to the WEBAPP/WEB-INF/classes directory
• In order to define a name and init params for the newly installed servlet you need to also:
  • register the servlet with a element in the WEBAPP/WEB-INF/web.xml file
  • you can optionally map your servlet to uri requests relative to the context within it is located by adding a element in the WEBAPP/WEB-INF/web.xml file
• And finally restart the server

You can access your new servlet via a URI similiar to the following:

http://localhost:8080/WEBAPP/servlet/SERVLET-NAME

If you've associated a URI path mapping to your servlet you can access it via a URI similiar to the following:

http://localhost:8080/WEBAPP/foo.EXTENSION

- or -

http://localhost:8080/WEBAPP/MAP-PATH

where:

WEBAPP = the web-application URI name

SERVLET-NAME = the base name of a servlet

EXTENSION = a file time extension

MAP-PATH = associated URI MAP path

b) To install jsps and beans within a web-application you can do the following:

• Put the jsp sources in any directory under /WEBAPP.
• Make sure that the compiled beans are in the CLASSPATH. This can be done either by setting the CLASSPATH manually or by editing the startup script.
• And finally restart the server.

  You can invoke your new jsp via a URI similar to the following:

  http://localhost:8080/WEBAPP/yourfile.jsp