Question

In Eclipse, the folder structure when I create a Dynamic Web Project is

[srikanth@hana Sample]$ ls -R
.:
build  src  WebContent

./build:
classes

./build/classes:

./src:

./WebContent:
index.html  META-INF  scripts  WEB-INF

./WebContent/META-INF:
MANIFEST.MF

./WebContent/scripts:
jquery-1.7.1.js

./WebContent/WEB-INF:
lib  web.xml

./WebContent/WEB-INF/lib:

As you can see, there is this WebContent directory, When I copy the directory structure from Eclipse workspace and put in webapps directory of Tomcat, it didn’t work. But, if I moved all the directories and files under WebContent directory a level above, it worked fine.

This is the folder structure in Tomcat’s webapps directory under application:

[srikanth@hana Sample]$ ls -R 
.:
build  index.html  META-INF  scripts  src  WEB-INF

./build:
classes

./build/classes:

./META-INF:
MANIFEST.MF

./scripts:
jquery-1.7.1.js

./src:

./WEB-INF:
lib  web.xml

./WEB-INF/lib:

So, now I can just go to http://localhost:8080/Sample and can go to index.html properly

What am I doing wrong? Why didn’t it work just copying the application
from Eclipse to tomcat webapps directory directly? Why do I have to
change the directory structure?

Answer 1

When I copy the directory structure from Eclipse workspace and put in
webapps directory of Tomcat, it didn’t work. But, if I moved all the
directories and files under WebContent directory a level above, it
worked fine

Not sure what you mean if I moved all the directories and files under WebContent directory a level above, it worked fine here and what you mean by saying a level above.

What you should be doing is not copy anything manually but right-click on the project and select Export as WAR option.
This will create a file named Project.war that contains the proper file structure i.e. WEB-INF etc that you are supposed to put under tomcat’s webapps dir