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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T21:43:37+00:00

Suppose my Tomcat webapps directory looks like this: webapps/ webapps/fooapp/ webapps/fooapp/WEB-INF/ webapps/fooapp/WEB-INF/web.xml webapps/fooapp/bardir/ When

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Suppose my Tomcat webapps directory looks like this:

webapps/
webapps/fooapp/
webapps/fooapp/WEB-INF/
webapps/fooapp/WEB-INF/web.xml
webapps/fooapp/bardir/

When I make a GET request for /fooapp/bardir, Tomcat sees that webapps/fooapp/bardir is a directory and sends back a 302 to /fooapp/bardir/ (with a slash at the end).

Here is my question: Where in the Tomcat source code does this take place? (I’m looking at 6.0.x but a correct answer for any version would be a great starting point.)

The only reference material I can find on this subject is in the Catalina Functional Specifications which states, regarding the Default Servlet:

On each HTTP GET request processed by this servlet, the following processing shall be performed:

[…]

  • If the requested resource is a directory:
    • If the request path does not end with “/”, redirect to a corresponding path with “/” appended so that relative references in welcome files are resolved correctly.

However, this functionality does not appear to be in org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet; or at least, it’s not there exclusively: if I replace the default servlet in web.xml with a servlet whose servlet-class does not exist, directory paths still come back 302 to add the slash, while every other request comes back with an error as expected.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think it happens in org.apache.tomcat.util.http.mapper.Mapper, namely in the internalMapWrapper (Context, CharChunk, MappingData) method.

    But unfortunately I’m not really sure — maybe this really is a question better suited for the tomcat-users mailing list. Sorry for not having a better answer.

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