JavaServer Pages, Second Edition

Appendix F. Web Application Structure and Deployment Descriptor Reference

A complete web application may consist of several different resources: JSP pages, servlets, applets, static HTML pages, custom tag libraries and other Java class files. Starting with Version 2.2, the servlet specification defines a portable way to package all these resources together with a deployment descriptor that contains configuration information such as how all the resources fit together, security requirements, etc. This appendix describes the standard file structure for a web application and how to use the deployment descriptor elements defined by the Servlet 2.3 specification to configure the application.

Web Application File Structure

The portable distribution and deployment format for a web application defined by the servlet specification is the Web Archive (WAR). All Servlet 2.2-compliant servers (or later) provide tools for installing a WAR file and associate the application with a servlet context.

A WAR file has a .war file extension and can be created with the Java jar command or a ZIP utility program, such as WinZip, as described at the end of this appendix. The internal structure of the WAR file is defined by the servlet specification:

/index.html /company/index.html /company/contact.html /company/phonelist.jsp /products/searchform.html /products/list.jsp /images/banner.gif /WEB-INF/web.xml /WEB-INF/lib/bean.jar /WEB-INF/lib/actions.jar /WEB-INF/classes/com/mycorp/servlets/PurchaseServlet.class ...