How to set the context path of a web application in Tomcat 7.0

Question

I know that I can rename my webapp (or it\'s WAR file) to ROOT but this is a terrible way to do it, IMHO. Now I checked out the tomcat doc & it says

Answer 1

In Tomcat 9.0, I only have to change the following in the server.xml

<Context docBase="web" path="/web" reloadable="true" source="org.eclipse.jst.jee.server:web"/>

to

<Context docBase="web" path="" reloadable="true" source="org.eclipse.jst.jee.server:web"/>

Answer 2

This little code worked for me, using virtual hosts

<Host name="my.host.name" >
   <Context path="" docBase="/path/to/myapp.war"/>
</Host>

Answer 3

What you can do is the following;

Add a file called ROOT.xml in <catalina_home>/conf/Catalina/localhost/

This ROOT.xml will override the default settings for the root context of the tomcat installation for that engine and host (Catalina and localhost).

Enter the following to the ROOT.xml file;

<Context 
  docBase="<yourApp>" 
  path="" 
  reloadable="true" 
/>

Here, <yourApp> is the name of, well, your app.. :)

And there you go, your application is now the default application and will show up on http://localhost:8080

However, there is one side effect; your application will be loaded twice. Once for localhost:8080 and once for localhost:8080/yourApp. To fix this you can put your application OUTSIDE <catalina_home>/webapps and use a relative or absolute path in the ROOT.xml's docBase tag. Something like this;

<Context 
  docBase="/opt/mywebapps/<yourApp>" 
  path="" 
  reloadable="true" 
/>

And then it should be all OK!

Answer 4

In Tomcat 8.X ,under tomcat home directory /conf/ folder in server.xml you can add <Context> tag under <Host> tag as shown below . But you have to restart the server in order to take effect

  <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
        unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">

     <Context docBase="${catalina.base}\webapps\<Your App Directory Name>" path="<your app path you wish>" reloadable="true" />
  </Host>

OR if you are using Tomcat 7.X you can add context.xml file in WEB-INF folder in your project . The contents of the file i used is as shown . and it worked fine for me . you don't have to restart server in this case .

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<Context docBase="${catalina.base}\webapps\<My App Directory Name>" path="<your app path you wish>" reloadable="true" />

Answer 5

Here follows the only solutions that worked for me. Add this to the Host node in the conf/server.xml

<Context path="" docBase="yourAppContextName">

  <!-- Default set of monitored resources -->
  <WatchedResource>WEB-INF/web.xml</WatchedResource>

</Context>

go to Tomcat server.xml file and set path blank

Answer 6

Quickest and may be the best solution is to have below content in <TOMCAT_INSTALL_DIR>/conf/Catalina/localhost/ROOT.xml

<Context 
  docBase="/your_webapp_location_directory" 
  path="" 
  reloadable="true" 
/>

And your webapp will be available at http://<host>:<port>/