Tomcat Interview Questions and Answers

Question: How do I override the default home page loaded by Tomcat?

Answer: After successfully installing Tomcat, you usually test it by loading http://localhost:8080 . The contents of that page are compiled into the index_jsp servlet. The page even warns against modifying the index.jsp files for this reason. Luckily, it is quite easy to override that page. Inside $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/web.xml there is a section called <welcome-file-list> and it looks like this:

<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>index.htm</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
The default servlet attempts to load the index.* files in the order listed. You may easily override the index.jsp file by creating an index.html file at $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/ROOT. It's somewhat common for that file to contain a new static home page or a redirect to a servlet's main page. A redirect would look like:

<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://mydomain.com/some/path/to/servlet/homepage/">
</head>

<body>
</body>

</html>
This change takes effect immediately and does not require a restart of Tomcat.

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