Question

The problem : My index.jsp with web.xml keeps going into HTTP 404 and 500

I’m using Tomcat6 .

This is from index.jsp :

  <legend>Registration</legend>
  <form action="./register"> <%-- Address from web.xml  --%>
    First name: <input type="text" name="firstName"><br>
    Last name: <input type="text" name="lastName"><br>
    <input type="submit" value="Register">
  </form>

When I’m in Registration :

and I hit the name and last-name , I go into 404 , the message :

HTTP Status 404 – Servlet RegistrationServlet is not available

type Status report

message Servlet RegistrationServlet is not available

description The requested resource (Servlet RegistrationServlet is not available) is not available.

Apache Tomcat/6.0.35

What do you think it the cause for that error ?

The class RegistrationServlet is under the file RegistrationServlet.java in the folder src/coreservlets/

I checked web.xml but it seems to be okay , but here it is (if it would be helpful):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd" version="2.4">
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>ShowBalance</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>coreservlets.ShowBalance</servlet-class>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>ShowBalance</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/show-balance</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>RandomNumberServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>coreservlets.RandomNumberServlet</servlet-class>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>RandomNumberServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/random-number</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>RegistrationServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>coreservlets.RegistrationServlet</servlet-class>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>RegistrationServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/register</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>PrimeServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>coreservlets.PrimeServlet</servlet-class>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>PrimeServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/prime</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
  <welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
    <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
  </welcome-file-list>
</web-app>

I’ve been trying to fix this little culprit for the last two days but nothing , any help would be much appreciated .

EDIT:

As requested , here is RegistrationServlet

package coreservlets;

import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;

public class RegistrationServlet extends HttpServlet {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    @Override
    public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
        HttpSession session = request.getSession();
        synchronized (session) {
            NameBean nameBean = (NameBean) session.getAttribute("name");
            if (nameBean == null) {
                nameBean = new NameBean();
                session.setAttribute("name", nameBean);
            }
            nameBean.setFirstName(request.getParameter("firstName"));
            nameBean.setLastName(request.getParameter("lastName"));
            String address = "/WEB-INF/mvc-sharing/ShowName.jsp";
            RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request
                    .getRequestDispatcher(address);
            dispatcher.forward(request, response);
        }
    }
}

Also here is the project tree :

Answer 1

Your URL is completely fine. If the URL was wrong, you would have gotten a 404 message like follows:

Requested resource register is not available

But you instead got

Servlet RegistrationServlet is not available

This means that the servlet was found, but that it couldn’t be executed because its construction and initialization failed with an exception. Under Tomcat’s covers, basically one of the following steps has failed:

Servlet servlet = new RegistrationServlet();
servlet.init(servletConfig);
servlet.init();

You need to read the server logs for this exception and then fix the code accordingly.

---

Whilst your URL is completely fine, it’s error prone to changes in the context. You’d rather like to specify a domain-relative URL instead:

<form action="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/register">

See also this related answer: Browser can't access/find relative resources like CSS, images and links when calling a Servlet which forwards to a JSP