The default servlet for Tomcat is declared in $CATALINA_HOME/conf/web.xml : <servlet> <servlet-name>default</servle... Therefore, static content is rendered by the default configuration unless you override it with your own definitions. If you want to allow directory listing, just change the listing parameter to true : <init-param> <param-name>listings</para... Change the welcome-file-list to display a default page in lieu of a directory listing: <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file>home.xhtml</... Welcome pages are defined at the Web application level.

There are two steps to create a custom function for JSP: Declare the function in the TLD: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <taglib... Implement the function (must be static): package com.example; public class UrlTransl... To use the function: <%@ taglib uri="http://www.example.com/jsp/tags" p...

Spring MVC 3.1 can send either JSON or HTML response on the same URL, depending on the type of response requested. With this mechanism, a page can be sent when directly requested from a link, but a JSON response can be sent in response to an AJAX request. This is the controller code: package com.example; import java.util.Map; ... In the above example, JSON response will be sent when the HTTP request contains header "Accept: application/json". HTML response will be sent then the header is "Accept: */*", or "Accept: text/html", or anything else. You can add a limitation that the HTML response does not produce "application/json". But then the question is which response will be sent when the HTTP header is "Accept: */*"? Both methods will...

These bean types are essential for the Spring MVC framework. I copied them here from the Spring Documentation for quick reference. Bean type Explanation HandlerMapping Maps incoming requests to handlers and a list of pre- and post-processors (handler interceptors) based on some criteria the details of which vary by HandlerMapping implementation. The most popular implementation supports annotated controllers but other implementations exists as well. HandlerAdapter Helps the DispatcherServlet to invoke a handler mapped to a request regardless of the handler is actually invoked. For example, invoking an annotated controller requires resolving various annotations. Thus the main purpose of a HandlerAdapter is to shield the DispatcherServlet from such details. HandlerExceptionResolver Maps exceptions to views also allowing for more complex exception handling code. ViewResolver Resolves logical String-based...

Thanks Dr.Xi, I was having a tough time changing the deployment context path of my web-app using the so-called context.xml file under /META-INF, it dint work (tomcat documentation at http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/context.html , seemed pretty sure it would :() But I have one question, as changing server.xml is too instrusive for every web-app you build, is there any other way of pushing this configuration to one of the application specific files ? thanks, Venky

You can customize Tomcat error page with error code: <error-page> <error-code>404</error-code> ... or Java exception type: <error-page> <exception-type>java.lang.Throwab... Either error-code or exception-type is required, but not both. There's no way to aggregate error codes, such as: <!-- This does not work! --> <error-page> ... Customizing error pages is about the only way to suppress the default stack trace in Tomcat in case of an unhandled exception.

flowplayer is another way to embed Flash in a web page. The code looks like this: <object width="6400" height="380" data="swf/flowpl... You need to download two swf files: http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer-3.2.1.swf http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer.controls-3.2.0.swf

Video for Everybody seems to be a generic way to embed video in a web page, even without flash. This code snippet comes from that site. <!-- first try HTML5 playback: if serving as XML, ...

This is a simple Hello World application with Spring 3 MVC. Like the default Apache HTTPd welcome page, it displays " It works! " when successfully deployed. The sole purpose is to show the minimum elements needed to setup Spring 3 MVC. I use Maven since it's so much easier than downloading the dependencies manually. Directory layout: ./src ./src/main ./src/main/webapp ./src/... pom.xml : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <project... WEB-INF/web.xml : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app... WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml (empty, but needed): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans x... WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans x... WEB-INF/jsp/home.jsp : <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>H... Build with: mvn clean package The resulting webapp is target/springmvc.war .

This is a simple JSP custom tags library with tag body. Just like the JSF counterpart , it splits a string and repeats the body for each word, i.e., with this markup: <%@ taglib uri="http://custom.tag.com/demo" prefix... output: <html> <body> <p>Hello Tigger!</p> <p>H... With Maven, this is the directory structure: ./src ./src/main ./src/main/resources ./s... There are three files to write: pom.xml : <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"... src/main/java/tagdemo/IterateTag.java : package tagdemo; import java.io.IOException... src/main/resources/META-INF/demotag.tld : <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DO... Build with: mvn clean install To use it as a dependency in other Maven projects: <dependency> <groupId>tag-demo</groupId> ...