Tomcat Default Config Changed

I've been trying to work my way through a book on Struts. It spent a chapter (for which I'm grateful) on basic servlets and JSPs, and walked me through a quick installation of Tomcat and some sample code.

Unfortunately, the basic instructions on how to test your first servlet were, apparently, wrong. The instructions state that you can use a URL like

http://localhost:8080/myapp/servlet/chapter2.SimpleServlet

to reach your servlet. However, nothing I could do with myapp/servlet would work.

Here's the catch. In Tomcat 4.1.12 and later, the default servlet runner is called the invoker servlet, and the default path for it is disabled. In order to enable this functionality, you need to edit install_dir/conf/web.xml and remove the comment marks surrounding the invoker servlet mapping. Now that I know what to search for, it's not too hard to find this FAQ on the Tomcat site.

Having discovered this, I'm now a happier camper. The instructions in the book were not wrong: they simply didn't anticipate that invoker would be disabled in future versions of Tomcat.