Question

I want to include some files in my WAR that the classes can get to but that Tomcat will never serve directly. I can think of lots of ways I could do this but I’m pretty sure there’s a canonical way I’m supposed to be doing this. References appreciated.

Answer 1

Having files under WEB-INF seems to be the standard in Tomcat as well as other app servers.

Sun’s official-enough article says:

The WEB-INF directory is special. The
files there are not served directly to
the client; instead, they contain Java
classes and configuration information
for the Web app. The directory behaves
like a jar file’s META-INF directory;
it contains metainformation about the
archive contents.