Spring MVC 3 Web.xml welcome file (index.jsp) doesn't get displayed 404

Question

Hope you can help because as far as I can see, this is set up correctly (but please prove me wrong).

I have my spring 3 mvc project configured as follows:

web.xml

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>myServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>myServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/frontPage</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

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

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>/WEB-INF/myServlet-service.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

And myServlet-servlet.xml

<mvc:annotation-driven />
<context:component-scan base-package="my.path.to.controllers" />

<bean
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping" />
<bean
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" />

<bean
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
    <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
    <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>

I have an index.jsp within WEB-INF (not WEB-INF/views) that does nothing more than say "Hello" (I was originally trying to get it to forward to /frontPage).

Now, if I type in the url for the controllers (localhost:8080/myServlet/frontPage), the controller works and the view is displayed, however when I first start up I get a 404 instead of the index.jsp page. I've tried adding a leading slash to index.jsp but that makes no difference.

I must have made a schoolboy error somewhere, but I can't for the life of me see where. Can anyone point it out for me?

Spring MVC 3.2 Tomcat 6 running in STS 2.9.1 servlet 2.5

Many thanks.

Solution

The WEB-INF folder is not accessible publicly. So you have to put your index.jsp somewhere reachable, for instance in the web application root folder.

/mywebapp
    /WEB-INF/
    /index.jsp