Organising code in Tomcat 5.5

Question

Hi,
I'm new to JSP and not all the experienced at Java, but I have a few burning questions about jsp's and Tomcat. I'm developing on a Windows machine before I deploy my code to a Linux machine. I'm using Tomcat 5.5 and building projects using NetBeans IDE 5.0.
I have a few questions.
1. What's the best way to organise my code, as in which directory should I put it in. Currently, every time I start a new 'project' in NetBeans, I put the new project in \Tomcat 5.5\webapps so my code for 'Project A' would be organised as so:
Source for written jsp's: \Tomcat 5.5\webapps\ProjectA\web
but the jsp's also appear in \Tomcat 5.5\webapps\ProjectA\build\web
Source for beans and Java classes: \Tomcat 5.5\webapps\ProjectA\src\java\ProjectAJava
The compiled classes appear in \Tomcat 5.5\webapps\ProjectA\build\web\WEB-INF\classes\ProjectAJava
I was wondering why my jsp source code appeared in two different locations and if there was a better way to do this
2. I want various projects to be able to access the same applications. Where is the best place to put such applications and what is the best way to refer to them (remembering that I'll be re-deploying the code to a new server).
3. Broadly speaking, what's the difference between a bean and a class. Does a bean just set and get variables, or can they contain methods, and if so when does a bean become a class?
OK, they're the burning questions I have.
Thanks for any help you can give me,
Graham

Answer 1

I would suggest that you dont use netbeans to 'build' your project. Usage of the ide to build/deploy projects would severely hamp your knowledge of how the server works which can be a real disadvantage when you want to test/debug/maintain/enhance your applications later. Restrict the use of the ide to help you in code assist, runtime debugging, syntax checking etc. It may be easy initially to have your ide deploy your application, but it sure is going to be a headache later on , especially in your case where you wish to develop on one system and deploy on another.
Now that is out of the way - some other things
1. Dont develop on tomcat - to elaborate the entire source of your application should be on a location outside the tomcat installation.
2. Organize your code into different directories - one for config files, one for jsps, one for html and images, one for java source, one for libraries used by your code etc.
Importantly these directories need not follow the j2ee web packaing structure. For example you can have tlds, web.xml and any other property files all in one folder, say, config.
3. Finally have an ANT (build tool) task, that puts it all together. This build file creates directories that mataches the web application standards, pulls files from your development source, organizes it, compiles java source and simply copies other files to their destinations and builds a war file. Optionally it could also copy the war file to the webapps directory. That's it :)
Note:
Following this process during development may be tedious. Each small change to the code would require building the entire application. For tomcat you can short circuit the process using a context file. Just create an xml file which has the same name as your context and drop it in <tomcat_install>/conf/catalina/localhost
The xml file should have the following content.
<context docBase = "d:/dev/myApp" path = "/myApp" reloadable= "true"/>
Note, this would necessiate a development directory hirearchy exactly sinilar to the web standard (ie web.xml in the WEB-INF folder, compiled source in WEB-INF/classes folder etc)
Hope all this helps,
ram.