Java webapp : How to map/direct webapp to your BASE URL/IP?

Question

Typically when you create a webapp you will access your webapp when you hit the url

<your_IP>/<Project_name>/

Example:

127.0.0.1/MyWebapp/

Question: How do you configure your webapp to run from base URL

Example

127.0.0.1/

Moreover, when the browser navigates to your IP (and not your IP + name of your webapp) you can hit your webpage

Question: Is this a configuration file that needs to be edited in your Application web server ?

Answer 1

It depends on your container, but generally you will name your file ROOT.war or specify the context explicitly.

For example, since you've tagged this question with jetty , here is the plugin in my pom.xml for embedded testing using mvn jetty:run . Notice the contextPath element.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-jetty-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>6.1.25</version>
    <configuration>
        <contextPath>/</contextPath>
        <scanIntervalSeconds>5</scanIntervalSeconds>
        <connectors>
            <connector implementation="org.mortbay.jetty.nio.SelectChannelConnector">
                <port>8081</port>
                <maxIdleTime>60000</maxIdleTime>
            </connector>
        </connectors>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

When I deploy to Tomcat, I simply name my file ROOT.war and drop it into the webapps folder. Note that you'll need to move or remove the existing ROOT content from webapps first.

Doing this will allow you to access your application at http[s]://<host>[:<port>]/ with no extra context needed.

Assuming you're using maven to build your application, you can avoid manually re-naming your WAR by specifying the finalName in your pom.xml.

<build>
    <finalName>ROOT</finalName>

    [...]
</build>