How to deploy to Tomcat from NetBeans?

Question

I've added Tomcat in the "Tools > Servers" menu and as you can see it appears in the list of servers:

But when I try to run my project, I cannot select Tomcat! The drop-down with servers is empty. I tried it with NetBeans 6.8 and 6.9 Beta. Any idea?

The end: I've used the wrong archetype so that NetBeans decided that Tomcat is not capable to execute it.

Solution 1

When you create a Maven based web app project, you specify the spec version of the project as you create it.

image of the Maven web App Wizard with default values http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/20d7e476a5.png

If you want to create a project that you can deploy with Tomcat, you need to change the value of the 'Java EE Version' field from 'Java EE 6' to 'Java EE 5', before you hit the Finish button.

Note: I had hoped that there was a simple change that could be applied to your projects pom file to convert it from Java EE 6 to Java EE 5... but it turns out that it is not so easy...

Solution 2

Is your webapp a real Java EE 6 webapp (without web.xml or with a Servlet 3.0 web.xml)?

If yes, maybe NetBeans doesn't show Tomcat because Tomcat is not a valid runtime environment for your application (use GlassFish).

Solution 3

Go into your web.xml and replace the header with:

<web-app version="2.5" 
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" 
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee 
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">

Go back to properties and you will be able to pick Tomcat

Solution 4

If you right-click the project, select Properties and go to Run, there should be a dropdown list of servers. Is that one empty as well?

Solution 5

Add this to your pom.xml after: <repositories></repositories>

<properties>
        <netbeans.hint.deploy.server>Tomcat60</netbeans.hint.deploy.server>
</properties>

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