AVAJAVA Web Tutorials

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For testing purposes, I'll add a 'Howdy' message from the doGet() method of TestServlet.

protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
	response.getWriter().println("Howdy");
}  	

We'll need to add a Context entry to Tomcat's server.xml to tell TomcatSW the project's docBase and the URL path that should be used to access to project.

<Context docBase="C:\projects\workspace\dynamic-web-test\WebContent" path="/dynamic-web-test" reloadable="true"/>

I'll create a Debug Configuration for the 'dynamic-web-test' project, specifying that org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap is the main class (this is contained in the Tomcat bootstrap.jar file).

We can set the Working directory to be the home directory of our Tomcat installation.

If we fire up our project in the Debug Configuration that we just created and then try hitting TestServlet in a web browser, you can see that we indeed can hit the servletW, since we are greeted by the 'Howdy' message.

In conclusion, it is quite easy to set up a Tomcat bootstrap debug configuration to run a Dynamic Web Project in EclipseSW. This technique is slightly more involved than setting up a Server configuration in Eclipse to run your project, but it is on the whole quite simple. Although features such as setting breakpoints in jsp's may not work if you run your project using the bootstrap method, working on your project on standard development tasks will typically be much smoother using the Tomcat Bootstrap class. The Server configuration is nice in terms of being able to click a couple times to run a web application, but it hides some project configuration details which can be annoying when you're trying to resolve difficult issues. The Bootstrap debug configuration technique covered in this tutorial exposes more details, which can simplify your debugging efforts. I recommend giving it a try. You may find that one technique works better for a particular task, and at other times, the other technique works better.