There are four different ways one can deploy a webapp to Tomcat.
If $TOMCAT_HOME is the Tomcat top-level directory:
- Copy the war file foo.war or exploded war directory to
$TOMCAT_HOME/webapps - Create a context file context.xml in the webapp’s META-INF/ directory that contains a fragment that describes the webapp deployment
- Add a
<Context>element to the<Host>element in Tomcat’s server.xml that describes the webapp deployment, including docBase. docBase is a attribute that locates the war file or exploded war directory in the filesystem. - Create a context file foo.xml in
$TOMCAT_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/foo.xmlthat contains a fragment that describes the webapp deployment, including docBase.
Sample $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/foo.xml