Letting tomcat start a class

Question

I have a class which runs as a daemon thread. I want this class to start right after tomcat boots. Is there a way to make Tomcat execute a class on startup?
The only way I can think of is creating a simple class which fetches a JSP that starts the thread. If anyone knows a better solution, I would be grateful.

Answer 1

If you want to run something on startup you can do it via a web.xml file:
   <servlet>
      <servlet-name>StartupServlet</servlet-name>
      <servlet-class>xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.StartupServlet</servlet-class>
      <init-param>
      <param-name>name</param-name>
      <param-value>value</param-value>
      </init-param>
      <init-param>
      <param-name>name2</param-name>
      <param-value>value2</param-value>
      </init-param>
      <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>     
   </servlet>