How to configure welcome file list in web.xml

Question

I have this in my web.xml document. I am trying to have a welcome list so I dont need to type the path for the home page anymore. But everytime a clicked the application in my tomcat page it displays The requested resource is not available.

<listener>
    <listener-class>web.Init</listener-class>
</listener>

<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>index</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>web.IndexServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>index</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/index</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

My servlet for the jsp page

package web;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;
import javax.servlet.ServletConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

public class IndexServlet extends HttpServlet
{
    private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass());
    private RequestDispatcher jsp;

    public void init(ServletConfig config) throws ServletException
    {
        ServletContext context = config.getServletContext();
        jsp = context.getRequestDispatcher("/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp");
    }

    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException, IOException
    {
        logger.debug("doGet()");
        jsp.forward(req, resp); 
    }
}

Why is that it is still not working?I still need to type the /index in my url...How to do this correctly?

Answer 1

You need to put the JSP file in /index.jsp instead of in /WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp. This way the whole servlet is superflous by the way.

WebContent
 |-- META-INF
 |-- WEB-INF
 |    `-- web.xml
 `-- index.jsp

If you're absolutely positive that you need to invoke a servlet this strange way, then you should map it on an URL pattern of /index.jsp instead of /index. You only need to change it to get the request dispatcher from request instead of from config and get rid of the whole init() method.

In case you actually intend to have a "home page servlet" (and thus not a welcome file — which has an entirely different purpose; namely the default file which sould be served when a folder is being requested, which is thus not specifically the root folder), then you should be mapping the servlet on the empty string URL pattern.

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>index</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern></url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

See also Difference between / and /* in servlet mapping url pattern.