How to publish a servlet class to web server?

Question

background:
web server: tomcat apache 4
context path: webapp\test\
servlet path: webapp\test\WEB-INF
servlet name: HelloWorld.class
i tried to placed the servlet class file to above servlet path,
but i can't invoke the servlet by http://localhost:8080/test/HelloWorld
what should i do in order to invoke the servlet at browser?
Is a web.xml necessary a must to provided a mapping between request name and actual class name?

Answer 1

First of all you need a *.war structure which look like this
/app-name
/app-name/WEB-INF/
/app-name/WEB-INF/lib
/app-name/WEB-INF/classes
When you have created this structure you add your servlet (HelloWorld.class) in the classes directory (Create the package structure first).
When this is done you need to map the servlet to a given uri which is done in the web.xml. An example is found below:
<servlet>
<servlet-name>hello</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>package.HelloWorld</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>hello</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/hello/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Hopefully this will help :-)
best regards
Stig