Tomcat install on OS X 10.4

I had seen Tomcat on job applications before, however this was the first time I had actually played with it. What is it? "Apache Tomcat is an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed under the Java Community Process." So it allows you to run Servlets and JSP on a server. Now I needed to find out how to install it on my Lazurus server running OS X 10.4.11 with the latest Java update.

1. First download tomcat from HERE (I used 5.5, so not sure about 6)

2. Then rename the unarchived tomcat folder to "Tomcat"

3. Drop the folder into /Library/

4. Fix the UNIX permissions recursively to 777 (BatchMod is a simple way if you do not know chmod, just check all of the boxes)

5. Edit the /Library/Tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml file, see below for example.

 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
 <tomcat-users>
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>
  <role rolename="role1"/>
  <role rolename="manager"/>
  <role rolename="admin"/>
  <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,admin,manager"/>
  <user username="both" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1"/>
  <user username="role1" password="tomcat" roles="role1"/>
 </tomcat-users>

6. Start tomcat by using the terminal to run "cd /Library/Tomcat/bin" and then "./startup.sh"

7. In a web browser head to http://127.0.0.1:8080/ and you should see the Tomcat start up page.

If you want to read on further I figured out most of my instructions from the Tomcat Wiki, so head there for more info or if you get stuck.

Just in case you where wondering, as I was, put your jsp and servlet files in the /Library/Tomcat/webaps/ folder. The webaps/ROOT folder being the one displayed at the base url address. So for now I am just using that folder for testing.

JSP is quite simple to pickup at a basic level if you already know Java. However there are a few differences do to it being web based, but so far I like not having to compile manually. I had no problem writing a few simple classes with outputs and will later play with post and get. HAHA, tri-fecto of web programing achieved (PHP, ASP, JSP), hm still need to sit down with Perl one of these days.