There are two methods to deploy an application in tomcat


1- Deploy the application in webapps directory directly under tomcat directory.


Put the .war file of project in webapp directory and restart tomcat.


2- You have a working project with correct directory structure anywhere on filesystem and you want to deploy that without moving it to webapps directory.


But I don’t wanna create a war file then putting it in webapps directory and later on whenever I make a change I’ll have to deploy it again.


To overcome this issue do the following


2.1- Go to tomcat directory


2.2- Then go to tomcat_home/conf/Catalina/localhost directory


Note: sometimes Catalina/localhost directory structure does not exit. If this is case then first create Catalina direcoty and then inside Catalina create localhost directorie.


2.3- Create an xml file. Give it a name. This name will be used to access the application from URL. In my case I name it adbank.xml and in the URL for my application is


http://localhost:8080/adbank


2.4- Add the following line in this xml file

<Context path="/AdBlast" docBase="/home/baig/Workspace-AdBlast/AdBank/webapp/webroot" debug="0" reloadable="true"/>

path: provide any name(I personally don’t know its functionality but the path did not matte for me)


docBase: provide the path to you project. I had a few problems with it, I solved it when I provided the path up to the directory where my project’s WEB-INF directory is placed.


2.4- Restart tomcat


2.5- Access you application with a URL similar to this one

http://localhost:8080/adbank


replace adbank with the name of your xml file.


More information

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/teaching/java/tomcatfaq.html