How to deploy a war file in Tomcat 7

Question

I have copied the sample.war file into the webapps directory of Tomcat, and I can access localhost:8080.

Now how will Tomcat deploy it, I mean do I need to open it in browser? How can I access the application?

Solution 1

You can access your application from: http://localhost:8080/sample

Deploying or redeploying of war files is automatic by default - after copying/overwriting the file sample.war, check your webapps folder for an extracted folder sample.

If it doesn't open properly, check the log files (e.g. tomcat/logs/catalina.out) for problems with deployment.

Solution 2

step-1. here I'm deploying pos.war First go to tomcat webapps folder and paste it

step-2. go to tomcat->bin folder start tomcat by clicking startup.bat

step-3. go to browser write localhost:port/project name eg. localhost:8080/pos (here my tomcat run on port 8080)

Done....

Solution 3

You just need to put your war file in webapps and then start your server.

it will get deployed.

otherwise you can also use tomcat manager a webfront to upload & deploy your war remotely.

Solution 4

Manual steps - Windows

1. Copy the .war file (E.g.: prj.war) to %CATALINA_HOME%\webapps ( E.g.: C:\tomcat\webapps )

2. Run %CATALINA_HOME%\bin\startup.bat

3. Your .war file will be extracted automatically to a folder that has the same name (without extension) (E.g.: prj)

4. Go to %CATALINA_HOME%\conf\server.xml and take the port for the HTTP protocol. <Connector port="8080" ... />. The default value is 8080.

5. Access the following URL:

   [<protocol>://]localhost:<port>/folder/resourceName

   (E.g.: localhost:8080/folder/resourceName)

Don't try to access the URL without the resourceName because it won't work if there is no file like index.html, or if there is no url pattern like "/" or "/*" in web.xml.

The available main paths are here: [<protocol>://]localhost:<port>/manager/html (E.g.: http://localhost:8080/manager/html) and they have true on the "Running" column.

---

Using the UI manager:

1. Go to [<protocol>://]localhost:<port>/manager/html/ (usually localhost:8080/manager/html/)

   This is also achievable from [<protocol>://]localhost:<port> > Manager App)

   If you get:

   403 Access Denied

   go to %CATALINA_HOME%\conf\tomcat-users.xml and check that you have enabled a line like this:

   <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1,manager-gui"/>
   

2. In the Deploy section, WAR file to deploy subsection, click on Browse....

   

3. Select the .war file (E.g.: prj.war) > click on Deploy.

4. In the Applications section, you can see the name of your project (E.g.: prj).

Solution 5

In addition to the ways already mentioned (dropping the war-file directly into the webapps-directory), if you have the Tomcat Manager -application installed, you can deploy war-files via browser too. To get to the manager, browse to the root of the server (in your case, localhost:8080), select "Tomcat Manager" (at this point, you need to know username and password for a Tomcat-user with "manager"-role, the users are defined in tomcat-users.xml in the conf-directory of the tomcat-installation). From the opening page, scroll downwards until you see the "Deploy"-part of the page, where you can click "browse" to select a WAR file to deploy from your local machine. After you've selected the file, click deploy. After a while the manager should inform you that the application has been deployed (and if everything went well, started).

Here's a longer how-to and other instructions from the Tomcat 7 documentation pages.

View more solutions

Comments

[Mamey]

The manager role in Tomcat 7 is now manager-gui. I got bitten by this one.

[Kevin Meredith]

what if the WAR is named "ROOT.war?" Where can I find that WAR?

[xverges]

Dropping the .war file in webapps hasn't worked for me, and there was no sign of error in the logs. Doing it from the Tomcat Manager did the trick. Not a clue about why the first method failed

[Koray Tugay]

What if I want to deploy my sample.war to localhost:8080/somethingdifferent ?

[Bozho]

you can specify that in META-INF/context.xml

[Koray Tugay]

The META-INF/context.xml, is it the one in tomcat\conf\context.xml ? Or should it be in my application I am deploying?

[Bozho]

it can be in both places. I prefer it to be within the application

[Dr.jacky]

Unfortunately it doesn't work! Would you like to test my specific war file?! Please download "linshare-core-1.8.4-without-SSO.war" from "forge.linshare.org/projects/linshare/files"

[Dr.jacky]

@Bozho Unfortunately it doesn't work! Would you like to test my specific war file?! Please download "linshare-core-1.8.4-without-SSO.war" from "forge.linshare.org/projects/linshare/files".

[jmj]

@Mr.H tail the log when you start the server after placing war, you will find why it is not working

[haltunbay]

"If the Host autoDeploy attribute is "true", the Host will attempt to deploy and update web applications dynamically, as needed, for example if a new .WAR is dropped into the appBase. For this to work, the Host needs to have background processing enabled which is the default configuration. "

[user250343]

This is not a valid undeployment / deployment procedure as it interferes with files exclusively managed by Tomcat. The best reference is Tomcat Web Application Deployment

[user250343]

While this may work in exceptional cases, it is not a valid undeployment / deployment procedure. mysite.www will create a new context if autodeploy="true" and deleting mysite.war deletes the mysite context under several normal conditions. The best reference is Tomcat Web Application Deployment.

[derwiwie]

In Ubuntu 14.04.3 the webapps directory is located at /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps .

[Anthony De Souza]

Thank you! Additionally, I needed to set permissions to my newly installed Tomcat directory structure so that my WAR could be extracted and log files could be generated.