Compiled Tomcat Servlet Example & got JAR, not WAR?

Question

Is there a basic reference on how to create a simple servlet with NetBeans 4.1 and deploy it to Tomcat?
When I created the project I chose Samples->Web->Tomcat Servlet Example, and yet it does not create a WAR file on compilation.
And of course once I'm past that I have to figure out how to edit the XML file, I gather.
I need a reference that will hold me by the hand and walk me through it once to kick start me.
After that I think I can make it without having to ask such newbie questions.

Answer 1

Hi,
not sure to what extent you are clear in build.xml file (done thru ant).
what i can tell you is, ant creates any archive file (be it .jar, .war, .ear) with the tasks named "jar" (<jar jarfile="yourfilename.jar"..>), "war" and "ear". But both war and ear are the extensions of the jar only.
You can achieve creation of any archive file with the jar task itself.
you need to take care of the following...
(1) you can /should edit the extension of the files at every stage.. first .jar and then .war and then .ear (if necessary) => basic flow
(2) at every step, you have to have a file inclusion inside the corresponding archive file..
say for example, for a .jar file you should include all the compiled .class files, and ejb-jar.xml (incase you use ejbs) and other built-in jar files....
In case of .war files (web archive) you should include the web.xml file, any static files (html, jsp etc), any tld files - it goes with your application's nature and requirement.....
fyi, i m including a sample build.xml file which i use for a webapplication, so it deals with war...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="ServletsReqDispFwd" default="deploy">
     <property name="top" value="."/>
     <property name="webinf" value="${top}/WEB-INF"/>
     <property name="lib" value="${webinf}/lib"></property>
     <property name="classes" value="WEB-INF/classes"/>
     <property name="jboss.dir" value="D:\jboss-3.2.2RC3\server\default\deploy"></property>
     <property name="tomcat.dir" value="D:\jakarta-tomcat-4.1.27\webapps"></property>
     <property name="warfile" value="ServletsReqDispFwd.war"></property>
     <property name="src" value="${top}/src"/>
     <property name="web.xml" value="WEB-INF/web.xml"/>
     <target name="package">
          <javac srcdir="${src}" destdir="${classes}"
                 listfiles="true" debug="true"  verbose="true"
                      classpath="${lib}/*.jar"/>
          <war warfile="${warfile}" webxml="${web.xml}">
               <webinf dir="${top}">
                    <include name="**/*web*.xml"/>
                    <include name="**/*application*.xml"/>
                    <exclude name="src/**/*.xml"/>
               </webinf>
               <lib dir="${lib}">
                    <include name="*.jar"/>
               </lib>
               <fileset dir="." includes="**/*.html"/>                    
               <classes dir="${classes}" includes="**/*.class"></classes>                         
          </war>
     </target>
     <target name="deploy" depends="clean,package">
          <copy file="${warfile}" todir="${tomcat.dir}" overwrite="true"></copy>
     </target>
     <target name="clean">
            <delete dir="${classes}">
                 <filename name="*.class"/>
          </delete>
          <delete>
               <fileset dir="${top}" includes="${warfile}"/>
          </delete>
          <delete>
               <fileset dir="${tomcat.dir}" includes="${warfile}"/>
          </delete>
     </target>
</project>hope this contribues to a certain extent to help you edit the buildfile (xml file as you go) to meet your requirement.....