Congratulations! You've decided to (or been told to) learn how to
build web applications using servlets and JSP pages, and picked the
Tomcat server to use for your learning and development. But now what
do you do?
This manual is a primer covering the basic steps of using Tomcat to
set up a development environment, organize your source code, and then
build and test your application. It does not discuss architectures or
recommended coding practices for web application development,
or provide in depth instructions on operating the development
tools that are discussed. References to sources of additional information
are included in the following subsections.
The discussion in this manual is aimed at developers who will be using
a text editor along with command line tools to develop and debug their
applications. As such, the recommendations are fairly generic – but you
should easily be able to apply them in either a Windows-based or Unix-based
development environment. If you are utilizing an Integrated Development
Environment (IDE) tool, you will need to adapt the advice given here to
the details of your particular environment.
The following links provide access to selected sources of online
information, documentation, and software that is useful in developing
web applications with Tomcat.
https://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/mrel/jsr245/index2.html -
JavaServer Pages (JSP) Specification, Version 2.3. Describes
the programming environment provided by standard implementations
of the JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology. In conjunction with
the Servlet API Specification (see below), this document describes
what a portable API page is allowed to contain. Specific
information on scripting (Chapter 9), tag extensions (Chapter 7),
and packaging JSP pages (Appendix A) is useful. The Javadoc
API Documentation is included in the specification, and with the
Tomcat download.
https://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr369/index1.html -
Servlet API Specification, Version 4.0. Describes the
programming environment that must be provided by all servlet
containers conforming to this specification. In particular, you
will need this document to understand the web application
directory structure and deployment file (Chapter 10), methods of
mapping request URIs to servlets (Chapter 12), container managed
security (Chapter 13), and the syntax of the web.xml
Web Application Deployment Descriptor (Chapter 14). The Javadoc
API Documentation is included in the specification, and with the
Tomcat download.
