Tomcat unable to find jsp in war file

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"&gt;

    <!-- 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"&gt;

        <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

Publicly accessible jsp files usually go outside WEB-INF directory, as in jsp/index.jsp, or simply index.jsp in the root of your war file.

WEB-INF directory is private or unavailable for outside-world users, although it's possible to perform request dispatcher forwards to them.

Cheers.

Answer 2

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.