How to avoid directory listing in java web applications.

Question

how to avoid directory listing in java web applications.
That is on typing the url of the application it should not the directory listing. Welcome tag in web.xml doesnot fully solve the problem, since still the images folder etc is still accessible

Answer 1

I know of two ways.
If you're using tomcat and have access to the conf directory.
Edit your $TOMCAT/conf/web.xml. Find your default servlet properties and change
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>debug</param-name>
      <param-value>0</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>listings</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>to  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>debug</param-name>
      <param-value>0</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>listings</param-name>
      <param-value>false</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>And restart your server. This will affect every directory on the server, and return a 405 directory browsing forbidden error.
Another way, is to place an index.jsp inside each directory with a simple one line redirect to your applications CONTEXT_PATH.response.sendRedirect("http://yourserver/yourapp/");This will only affect specific directories which contain these index.jsp files.
Hope this helps