Spring RestController gives 404 Error with Netbeans and TomCat - spring-boot

Question

I am trying to start my first Springboot application with Netbeans 13 and Apache Tomcat 8.5.81. I created a WebApplication project and edited the POM by adding:
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
Then I created the following rest controller:
package com.springboot.springtemplate;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
#RestController
public class WebController
{
#RequestMapping("/hello")
public String home()
{
System.out.println("hello");
return "<h1> Hi!</h1>" ;
}
}
and the main file:
package com.springboot.springtemplate;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
#SpringBootApplication
public class Application
{
public static void main(String [] args)
{
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}
Accessing http://localhost:8080/SpringTemplate/index.html gives the desired result, instead
http://localhost:8080/SpringTemplate/hello gives 404 error. It seems releated with the context path, but I cannot get rid of the problem. The web.xml file, which was autogenerated by Netbeans, is the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="3.1" xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee
http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd">
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener- class>
</listener>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.htm</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<session-config>
<session-timeout>
30
</session-timeout>
</session-config>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>redirect.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
while dispatcher-servlet.xml is:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.3.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-4.3.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-4.3.xsd">
<!--
Most controllers will use the ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping above, but
for the index controller we are using ParameterizableViewController, so we must
define an explicit mapping for it.
-->
<bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="index.htm">indexController</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"
p:prefix="/WEB-INF/jsp/"
p:suffix=".jsp" />
<!--
The index controller.
-->
<bean name="indexController"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ParameterizableViewController"
p:viewName="index" />
</beans>
Notice also that the latter xml file was autogenerated.

Answer 1

The issue is related with the versions of Tomcat and Spring. Switching to Tomcat 10.x and Spring 3.x resolved.