Spring boot application rest call gives 404 Error in tomcat for next request - spring-boot

Question

New to spring boot. Deployed war to tomcat server. The url after deploying is - http://localhost:8080/project-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/. Which displays the welcome jsp page and works fine. The start button should call the controller start the project. But url call goes to http://localhost:8080/startProject instead of http://localhost:8080/project-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/startProject.
After manually entering /startProject after the snapshot version the project works fine. What am I missing to configure? Please help. Thank you.
My code is a below
Welcome.Jsp
<a type="button" class="start-btn" href="/startProject">Start New Project</a>
Pom.xml
4.0.0
org.springframework.boot
spring-boot-starter-parent
2.3.4.RELEASE
com.project
mancala
0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
war
mancala
Demo project for Spring Boot
<properties>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
<scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>
<artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
ProjectController.java
#Controller
public class ProjectController {
#Autowired
private ProjectService projectService;
#GetMapping(value = "/")
public String login() {
return "project";
}
#GetMapping(value = "/startProject")
public String startNewGame(ModelMap model) {
ProjectModel projectModel = projectService.startNewProject();
model.addAttribute("projectModel", projectModel);
return "project";
}
}

Answer 1

Since, you have set the server.servlet.context-path property in application.properties file to project-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT, the application is accessible via url: http://localhost:8080/project-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/.
So, all your jsp page url's must begin with the context path: /project-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/**.
That means, the startProject page url in your Welcome.jsp file should look like this:
<a type="button" class="start-btn" href="/project-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT/startProject">Start New Project</a>
I have a sample project that could prove helpful to you here: https://github.com/nkumashi/springboot-webmvc-demo.