Tomcat unable to find jsp in war file - spring

Question

I recently switched one of my static html files to a Spring controller that uses a JSP to render its view. I use jetty to test locally and local testing shows the page rendering fine. Upon deploying to our test server, which uses Tomcat 6.0.26, I get the following exception:
javax.servlet.ServletException: Could not get RequestDispatcher for [/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp]: check that this file exists within your WAR
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceView.renderMergedOutputModel(InternalResourceView.java:219)
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.AbstractView.render(AbstractView.java:250)
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.render(DispatcherServlet.java:1060)
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:798)
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:716)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:644)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:549)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:617)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)
I have confirmed that the JSP exists in the war I deploy and the exploded directory that tomcat creates upon deployment. Here is what my web.xml and front-controller-servlet.xml files look like respectively (web.xml shorted slightly):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
<!-- Initialize the Spring DispatcherServlet -->
<servlet>
<servlet-name>gwtrpc</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<!-- Map the DispatcherServlet to only intercept RPC requests -->
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>gwtrpc</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.gwtrpc</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>front-controller</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>front-controller</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/search.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>front-controller</welcome-file>
<welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
front-controller-servlet.xml:
<?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:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:security="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/security
http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.0.xsd">
<bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
<property name="mappings">
<props>
<prop key="/search.html">indexController</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="indexController" class="com.company.search.web.server.controller.IndexController" />
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView" />
</bean>
</beans>
The difference between my dev instance and test instance is that the dev instance is deployed to the root (localhost/search.html) whereas the test instance is deployed to server.com/appname/search.html. Appname is the name of the *.war file I deploy. I have tried adding the full path as the prefix to the jps files (/appname/WEB-INF/jsp/) and a number of other combinations with no luck. I have verified that the jsp-api jars are in the tomcat lib directory. My tomcat install is the basic/default install.

Answer 1

The issue was caused by the default jsp servlet being removed from the default web.xml of the tomcat install. This had been done by a former co-worker and not to my knowledge. Replacing the test server's web.xml with the default web.xml (which included url-patterns/servlets for handling jsp files) corrected the issue.