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The description below uses the variable name $CATALINA_BASE to refer the
base directory against which most relative paths are resolved. If you have
not configured Tomcat for multiple instances by setting a CATALINA_BASE
directory, then $CATALINA_BASE will be set to the value of $CATALINA_HOME,
the directory into which you have installed Tomcat.
The Context element represents a web
application, which is run within a particular virtual host.
Each web application is based on a Web Application Archive
(WAR) file, or a corresponding directory containing the corresponding
unpacked contents, as described in the Servlet Specification (version
2.2 or later). For more information about web application archives,
you can download the
Servlet
Specification, and review the Tomcat
Application Developer's Guide. The web application used to process each HTTP request is selected
by Catalina based on matching the longest possible prefix of the
Request URI against the context path of each defined Context.
Once selected, that Context will select an appropriate servlet to
process the incoming request, according to the servlet mappings defined
by the web application deployment. You may define as many Context elements as you
wish. Each such Context MUST have a unique context name. In
addition, a Context must be present with a context path equal to
a zero-length string. This Context becomes the default
web application for this virtual host, and is used to process all
requests that do not match any other Context's context path. You may deploy multiple versions of a web application with the same
context path at the same time. The rules used to match requests to a
context version are as follows:
When autoDeploy or deployOnStartup is used then there is a close relationship between the context name, context path, context version and the base file name used for the WAR and/or directory that contains the web application when the WAR or directory is located in the Host's appBase. When no version is specified, the rules are:
##version is added to the contextName and base
name. To help clarify these rules, some examples are given in the following
table.
| Context Path | Context Version | Context Name | Base filename |
|---|---|---|---|
| /foo | None | /foo | foo |
| /foo/bar | None | /foo/bar | foo#bar |
| Empty String | None | Empty String | ROOT |
| /foo | 42 | /foo##42 | foo##42 |
| /foo/bar | 42 | /foo/bar##42 | foo#bar##42 |
| Empty String | 42 | ##42 | ROOT##42 |
The version component is treated as a String both for
performance reasons and to allow flexibility in versioning schemes. String
comparisons are used to determine version order. If version is not specified,
it is treated as the empty string.
Therefore,
foo.war will be treated as an earlier version than
foo##11.war and
foo##11.war will be treated as an earlier version than
foo##2.war. If using a purely numerical versioning scheme it is
recommended that zero padding is used so that foo##002.war is
treated as an earlier version than foo##011.war.
If you want to deploy a WAR file or a directory using a context path that is not related to the base file name then one of the following options must be used to prevent double-deployment:
It is NOT recommended to place <Context> elements directly in the
server.xml file. This is because it makes modifying the
Context configuration more invasive since the main
conf/server.xml file cannot be reloaded without restarting
Tomcat.
Individual Context elements may be explicitly defined:
/META-INF/context.xml inside the
application files. Optionally (based on the Host's copyXML attribute)
this may be copied to
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ and renamed to
application's base file name plus a ".xml" extension.$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ directory.
The context path and version will be derived from the base name of the file
(the file name less the .xml extension). This file will always take precedence
over any context.xml file packaged in the web application's META-INF
directory.conf/server.xml.Default Context elements may be defined that apply to multiple web applications. Configuration for an individual web application will override anything configured in one of these defaults. Any nested elements, e.g. <Resource> elements, that are defined in a default Context will be created once for each Context to which the default applies. They will not be shared between Context elements.
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/context.xml file:
the Context element information will be loaded by all webapps.$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/context.xml.default
file: the Context element information will be loaded by all webapps of that
host.With the exception of server.xml, files that define Context elements may only define a single Context element.
In addition to explicitly specified Context elements, there are several techniques by which Context elements can be created automatically for you. See Automatic Application Deployment and User Web Applications for more information.
To define multiple Contexts that use a single WAR file or directory, use one of the options described above for creating a Context that has a path that is not related to the base file name and create multiple Context definitions.
All implementations of Context support the following attributes:
Set to true if Tomcat should automatically parse
multipart/form-data request bodies when HttpServletRequest.getPart*
or HttpServletRequest.getParameter* is called, even when the
target servlet isn't marked with the @MultipartConfig annotation
(See Servlet Specification 3.0, Section 3.2 for details).
Note that any setting other than false causes Tomcat
to behave in a way that is not technically spec-compliant.
The default is false
This value represents the delay in seconds between the invocation of the backgroundProcess method on this context and its child containers, including all wrappers. Child containers will not be invoked if their delay value is not negative (which would mean they are using their own processing thread). Setting this to a positive value will cause a thread to be spawn. After waiting the specified amount of time, the thread will invoke the backgroundProcess method on this host and all its child containers. A context will use background processing to perform session expiration and class monitoring for reloading. If not specified, the default value for this attribute is -1, which means the context will rely on the background processing thread of its parent host.
Java class name of the implementation to use. This class must
implement the org.apache.catalina.Context interface.
If not specified, the standard value (defined below) will be used.
Set to true if you want cookies to be used for
session identifier communication if supported by the client (this
is the default). Set to false if you want to disable
the use of cookies for session identifier communication, and rely
only on URL rewriting by the application.
Set to true if you want calls within this application
to ServletContext.getContext() to successfully return a
request dispatcher for other web applications running on this virtual
host. Set to false (the default) in security
conscious environments, to make getContext() always
return null.
The Document Base (also known as the Context
Root) directory for this web application, or the pathname
to the web application archive file (if this web application is
being executed directly from the WAR file). You may specify
an absolute pathname for this directory or WAR file, or a pathname
that is relative to the appBase directory of the
owning Host.
The value of this field must not be set unless the Context element is
defined in server.xml or the docBase is not located under
the Host's appBase.
If a symbolic link is used for docBase then changes to the symbolic link will only be effective after a Tomcat restart or by undeploying and redeploying the context. A context reload is not sufficient.
Set to true to fire any configured
ServletRequestListeners when Tomcat forwards a request. This is
primarily of use to users of CDI frameworks that use
ServletRequestListeners to configure the necessary environment for a
request. If not specified, the default value of false is
used.
Set to true if you want the effective web.xml used for a
web application to be logged (at INFO level) when the application
starts. The effective web.xml is the result of combining the
application's web.xml with any defaults configured by Tomcat and any
web-fragment.xml files and annotations discovered. If not specified, the
default value of false is used.
Set to true to ignore any settings in both the global
or Host default contexts. By default, settings
from a default context will be used but may be overridden by a setting
the same attribute explicitly for the Context.
The context path of this web application, which is matched against the beginning of each request URI to select the appropriate web application for processing. All of the context paths within a particular Host must be unique. If you specify a context path of an empty string (""), you are defining the default web application for this Host, which will process all requests not assigned to other Contexts.
The value of this field must not be set except when statically defining a Context in server.xml, as it will be inferred from the filenames used for either the .xml context file or the docBase.
When set to true and the user presents credentials for a
resource that is not protected by a security constraint, if the
authenticator supports preemptive authentication (the standard
authenticators provided with Tomcat do) then the user' credentials
will be processed. If not specified, the default of falseis
used.
Set to true to allow this context to use container
servlets, like the manager servlet. Use of the privileged
attribute will change the context's parent class loader to be the
Server class loader rather than the Shared class
loader. Note that in a default installation, the Common class
loader is used for both the Server and the Shared
class loaders.
Set to true if you want Catalina to monitor classes in
/WEB-INF/classes/ and /WEB-INF/lib for
changes, and automatically reload the web application if a change
is detected. This feature is very useful during application
development, but it requires significant runtime overhead and is
not recommended for use on deployed production applications. That's
why the default setting for this attribute is false. You
can use the Manager web
application, however, to trigger reloads of deployed applications
on demand.
Comma separated list of Servlet names (as used in
/WEB-INF/web.xml) that expect a resource to be present.
Ensures that welcome files associated with Servlets that expect a
resource to be present (such as the JSP Servlet) are not used when there
is no resource present. This prevents issues caused by the clarification
of welcome file mapping in section 10.10 of the Servlet 3.0
specification. If the
org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE
system property is set to
true, the default value of this attribute will be the empty
string, else the default value will be jsp.
The domain to be used for all session cookies created for this context. If set, this overrides any domain set by the web application. If not set, the value specified by the web application, if any, will be used.
The name to be used for all session cookies created for this
context. If set, this overrides any name set by the web application.
If not set, the value specified by the web application, if any, will be
used, or the name JSESSIONID if the web application does
not explicitly set one.
The path to be used for all session cookies created for this
context. If set, this overrides any path set by the web application.
If not set, the value specified by the web application will be used, or
the context path used if the web application does not explicitly set
one. To configure all web application to use an empty path (this can be
useful for portlet specification implementations) set this attribute to
/ in the global CATALINA_BASE/conf/context.xml
file.
Some browsers, such as IE, will send a session cookie for a context
with a path of /foo with a request to /foobar. To prevent this, Tomcat
will add a trailing slash to the path associated with the session cookie
so, in the above example, the cookie path becomes /foo/. However, with a
cookie path of /foo/, IE will no longer send the cookie with a request
to /foo. This should not be a problem unless there is a servlet mapped
to /*. In this case this feature will need to be disabled. The default
value for this attribute is true. To disable this feature,
set the attribute to false.
Set to false if Tomcat should not read any additional request body data for aborted uploads and instead abort the client connection. This setting is used in the following situations:
maxPostSize configured in the connectorThe default is true, so additional data will be
read.
Note if an error occurs during the request processing that triggers a 5xx response, any unread request data will always be ignored and the client connection will be closed once the error response has been written.
If the value of this flag is true, the bytes output to
System.out and System.err by the web application will be redirected to
the web application logger. If not specified, the default value
of the flag is false.
If the value of this flag is true, the TLD files
XML validation will be namespace-aware. If you turn this flag on,
you should probably also turn tldValidation on. If the
org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE
system property is set to
true, the default value of this attribute will be
true, else the default value will be false.
Setting this attribute to true will incur a performance
penalty.
If the value of this flag is true, the TLD files
will be XML validated on context startup. If the
org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE
system property is set to
true, the default value of this attribute will be
true, else the default value will be false.
Setting this attribute to true will incur a performance
penalty.
Should the HttpOnly flag be set on session cookies to prevent client
side script from accessing the session ID? Defaults to
true.
Java class name of the org.apache.catalina.Wrapper
implementation class that will be used for servlets managed by this
Context. If not specified, a standard default value will be used.
If the value of this flag is true, the validation of
XML files will be namespace-aware. If you turn this flag on,
you should probably also turn xmlValidation on. If
the org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE
system property is set to
true, the default value of this attribute will be
true, else the default value will be false.
Setting this attribute to true will incur a performance
penalty.
If the value of this flag is true, the XML files
will be validated on context startup. If the
org.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE
system property is set to
true, the default value of this attribute will be
true, else the default value will be false.
Setting this attribute to true will incur a performance
penalty.
The standard implementation of Context is org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext. It supports the following additional attributes (in addition to the common attributes listed above):
This attribute controls if, in addition to static resources being
served from META-INF/resources inside web application JAR
files, static resources are also served from
WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/resources. This only applies to
web applications with a major version of 3 or higher. Since this is a
proprietary extension to the Servlet 3 specification, it is disabled by
default. To enable this feature, set the attribute to true.
This attribute provides a list of external locations from which to
load resources for this context. The list of aliases should be of
the form "/aliasPath1=docBase1,/aliasPath2=docBase2" where
aliasPathN must include a leading '/' and
docBaseN must be an absolute path to either a .war file or
a directory.
A resource will be searched for in the first docBaseN
for which aliasPathN is a leading path segment of the
resource. If there is no such alias, then the resource will be searched
in the usual way.
Using '/' as an aliasPath is not allowed. Consider using
docBase instead.
These external locations will not be emptied if the context is un-deployed.
If the value of this flag is true, symlinks will be
allowed inside the web application, pointing to resources outside the
web application base path. If not specified, the default value
of the flag is false.
NOTE: This flag MUST NOT be set to true on the Windows platform (or any other OS which does not have a case sensitive filesystem), as it will disable case sensitivity checks, allowing JSP source code disclosure, among other security problems.
If true, the Tomcat classloader will take extra measures to avoid
JAR file locking when resources are accessed inside JARs through URLs.
This will impact startup time of applications, but could prove to be
useful on platforms or configurations where file locking can occur.
If not specified, the default value is false.
antiJARLocking is a subset of
antiResourceLocking and therefore, to prevent duplicate
work and possible issues, only one of these attributes should be set
to true at any one time.
If true, Tomcat will prevent any file locking.
This will significantly impact startup time of applications,
but allows full webapp hot deploy and undeploy on platforms
or configurations where file locking can occur.
If not specified, the default value is false.
antiJARLocking is a subset of
antiResourceLocking and therefore, to prevent duplicate
work and possible issues, only one of these attributes should be set
to true at any one time.
Please note that setting this to true has some side
effects, including the disabling of JSP reloading in a running server:
see
Bugzilla 37668.
Please note that setting this flag to true in applications that are
outside the appBase for the Host (the webapps directory
by default) will cause the application to be deleted on
Tomcat shutdown. You probably don't want to do this, so think twice
before setting antiResourceLocking=true on a webapp that's outside the
appBase for its Host.
Maximum size of the static resource cache in kilobytes.
If not specified, the default value is 10240
(10 megabytes).
Maximum size of the static resource that will be placed in the cache.
If not specified, the default value is 512
(512 kilobytes). If this value is greater than
cacheMaxSize/20 it will be reduced to
cacheMaxSize/20.
Amount of time in milliseconds between cache entries revalidation.
If not specified, the default value is 5000
(5 seconds).
If the value of this flag is true, the cache for static
resources will be used. If not specified, the default value
of the flag is true.
If true and an sun.net.www.http.HttpClient
keep-alive timer thread has been started by this web application and is
still running, Tomcat will change the context class loader for that
thread from the current WebappClassLoader to
WebappClassLoader#parent to prevent a memory leak. Note
that the keep-alive timer thread will stop on its own once the
keep-alives all expire however, on a busy system that might not happen
for some time. If not specified, the default value of
true will be used.
If true, Tomcat attempts to null out any static or final
fields from loaded classes when a web application is stopped as a work
around for apparent garbage collection bugs and application coding
errors. There have been some issues reported with log4j when this
is true. Applications without memory leaks using recent
JVMs should operate correctly with this attribute set to
false. If not specified, the default value of
false will be used.
If true, Tomcat attempts to terminate threads that have
been started by the web application. Stopping threads is performed via
the deprecated (for good reason) Thread.stop() method and
is likely to result in instability. As such, enabling this should be
viewed as an option of last resort in a development environment and is
not recommended in a production environment. If not specified, the
default value of false will be used.
If true, Tomcat attempts to terminate
java.util.Timer threads that have been started by the web
application. Unlike standard threads, timer threads can be stopped
safely although there may still be side-effects for the application. If
not specified, the default value of false will be used.
Whether the context should process TLDs on startup. The default is true. The false setting is intended for special cases that know in advance TLDs are not part of the webapp.
If true, when this context is stopped, Tomcat renews all
the threads from the thread pool that was used to serve this context.
This also requires that the
ThreadLocalLeakPreventionListener be configured in
server.xml and that the threadRenewalDelay
property of the Executor be >=0. If not specified, the
default value of true will be used.
Number of ms that the container will wait for servlets to unload.
If not specified, the default value is 2000 ms.
If false, the unpackWARs attribute of
the owning Host will be overridden and the WAR
file will not be unpacked. If true, the value of the owning
Host's unpackWARs
attribute will determine if the WAR is unpacked. If not specified, the
default value is true. Note that WAR files located outside
of a Host's appBase are
never unpacked.
Set to true (the default) to have Catalina enable a
JNDI InitialContext for this web application that is
compatible with Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform
conventions.
Pathname to a scratch directory to be provided by this Context
for temporary read-write use by servlets within the associated web
application. This directory will be made visible to servlets in the
web application by a servlet context attribute (of type
java.io.File) named
javax.servlet.context.tempdir as described in the
Servlet Specification. If not specified, a suitable directory
underneath $CATALINA_BASE/work will be provided.
You can nest at most one instance of the following utility components by nesting a corresponding element inside your Context element:
A context is associated with the
org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.[enginename].[hostname].[path]
log category. Note that the brackets are actually part of the name, don't omit them.
When you run a web server, one of the output files normally generated is an access log, which generates one line of information for each request processed by the server, in a standard format. Catalina includes an optional Valve implementation that can create access logs in the same standard format created by web servers, or in any number of custom formats.
You can ask Catalina to create an access log for all requests processed by an Engine, Host, or Context by nesting a Valve element like this:
See Access Log Valve for more information on the configuration attributes that are supported.
If you use the standard Context implementation, the following configuration steps occur automatically when Catalina is started, or whenever this web application is reloaded. No special configuration is required to enable this feature.
conf/web.xml
will be processed as defaults for this web application. This is used
to establish default mappings (such as mapping the *.jsp
extension to the corresponding JSP servlet), and other standard
features that apply to all web applications./WEB-INF/web.xml resource for this web application
will be processed (if this resource exists).You can configure named values that will be made visible to the
web application as servlet context initialization parameters by nesting
<Parameter> elements inside this element. For
example, you can create an initialization parameter like this:
This is equivalent to the inclusion of the following element in the
web application deployment descriptor (/WEB-INF/web.xml):
but does not require modification of the deployment descriptor to customize this value.
The valid attributes for a <Parameter> element
are as follows:
Optional, human-readable description of this context initialization parameter.
The name of the context initialization parameter to be created.
Set this to false if you do not want
a <context-param> for the same parameter name,
found in the web application deployment descriptor, to override the
value specified here. By default, overrides are allowed.
The parameter value that will be presented to the application
when requested by calling
ServletContext.getInitParameter().
You can configure named values that will be made visible to the
web application as environment entry resources, by nesting
<Environment> entries inside this element. For
example, you can create an environment entry like this:
This is equivalent to the inclusion of the following element in the
web application deployment descriptor (/WEB-INF/web.xml):
but does not require modification of the deployment descriptor to customize this value.
The valid attributes for an <Environment> element
are as follows:
Optional, human-readable description of this environment entry.
The name of the environment entry to be created, relative to the
java:comp/env context.
Set this to false if you do not want
an <env-entry> for the same environment entry name,
found in the web application deployment descriptor, to override the
value specified here. By default, overrides are allowed.
The fully qualified Java class name expected by the web application
for this environment entry. Must be one of the legal values for
<env-entry-type> in the web application deployment
descriptor: java.lang.Boolean,
java.lang.Byte, java.lang.Character,
java.lang.Double, java.lang.Float,
java.lang.Integer, java.lang.Long,
java.lang.Short, or java.lang.String.
The parameter value that will be presented to the application
when requested from the JNDI context. This value must be convertable
to the Java type defined by the type attribute.
If you have implemented a Java object that needs to know when this
Context is started or stopped, you can declare it by
nesting a Listener element inside this element. The
class name you specify must implement the
org.apache.catalina.LifecycleListener interface, and
the class must be packaged in a jar and placed in the
$CATALINA_HOME/lib directory.
It will be notified about the occurrence of the corresponding
lifecycle events. Configuration of such a listener looks like this:
Note that a Listener can have any number of additional properties that may be configured from this element. Attribute names are matched to corresponding JavaBean property names using the standard property method naming patterns.
You can ask Catalina to check the IP address, or host name, on every
incoming request directed to the surrounding
Engine, Host, or
Context element. The remote address or name
will be checked against configured "accept" and/or "deny"
filters, which are defined using java.util.regex Regular
Expression syntax. Requests that come from locations that are
not accepted will be rejected with an HTTP "Forbidden" error.
Example filter declarations:
See Remote Address Filter and Remote Host Filter for more information about the configuration options that are supported.
You can declare the characteristics of the resource
to be returned for JNDI lookups of <resource-ref> and
<resource-env-ref> elements in the web application
deployment descriptor. You MUST also define
the needed resource parameters as attributes of the Resource
element, to configure the object factory to be used (if not known to Tomcat
already), and the properties used to configure that object factory.
For example, you can create a resource definition like this:
This is equivalent to the inclusion of the following element in the
web application deployment descriptor (/WEB-INF/web.xml):
but does not require modification of the deployment descriptor to customize this value.
The valid attributes for a <Resource> element
are as follows:
Specify whether the web Application code signs on to the
corresponding resource manager programatically, or whether the
Container will sign on to the resource manager on behalf of the
application. The value of this attribute must be
Application or Container. This
attribute is required if the web application
will use a <resource-ref> element in the web
application deployment descriptor, but is optional if the
application uses a <resource-env-ref> instead.
Name of the zero-argument method to call on a singleton resource when
it is no longer required. This is intended to speed up clean-up of
resources that would otherwise happen as part of garbage collection.
This attribute is ignored if the singleton attribute is
false. If not specificed, no default is defined and no close method will
be called.
Optional, human-readable description of this resource.
The name of the resource to be created, relative to the
java:comp/env context.
Specify whether connections obtained through this resource
manager can be shared. The value of this attribute must be
Shareable or Unshareable. By default,
connections are assumed to be shareable.
Specify whether this resource definition is for a singleton resource,
i.e. one where there is only a single instance of the resource. If this
attribute is true, multiple JNDI lookups for this resource
will return the same object. If this attribute is false,
multiple JNDI lookups for this resource will return different objects.
This attribute must be true for
javax.sql.DataSource resources to enable JMX registration
of the DataSource. The value of this attribute must be true
or false. By default, this attribute is true.
The fully qualified Java class name expected by the web application when it performs a lookup for this resource.
This element is used to create a link to a global JNDI resource. Doing a JNDI lookup on the link name will then return the linked global resource.
For example, you can create a resource link like this:
The valid attributes for a <ResourceLink> element
are as follows:
The name of the linked global resource in the global JNDI context.
The name of the resource link to be created, relative to the
java:comp/env context.
The fully qualified Java class name expected by the web application when it performs a lookup for this resource link.
The fully qualified Java class name for the class creating these objects.
This class should implement the javax.naming.spi.ObjectFactory interface.
When the attribute factory="org.apache.naming.factory.DataSourceLinkFactory" the resource link can be used with
two additional attributes to allow a shared data source to be used with different credentials.
When these two additional attributes are used in combination with the javax.sql.DataSource
type, different contexts can share a global data source with different credentials.
Under the hood, what happens is that a call to getConnection()
is simply translated to a call
getConnection(username, password) on the global data source. This is an easy way to get code to be transparent to what schemas are being used,
yet be able to control connections (or pools) in the global configuration.
username value for the getConnection(username, password)
call on the linked global DataSource.
password value for the getConnection(username, password)
call on the linked global DataSource.
Shared Data Source Example
When a request for getConnection() is made in the /foo context, the request is translated into
getConnection("foo","foopass"), while a request in the /bar gets passed straight through.
You can declare the characteristics of the UserTransaction
to be returned for JNDI lookup for java:comp/UserTransaction.
You MUST define an object factory class to instantiate
this object as well as the needed resource parameters as attributes of the
Transaction
element, and the properties used to configure that object factory.
The valid attributes for the <Transaction> element
are as follows:
The class name for the JNDI object factory.