Spring-boot: JSP support in embedded tomcat jar packaging

[kamoor]

As per spring boot documentation, JSP will not work with jar packing with embedded tomcat.

See:
http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/boot-features-developing-web-applications.html#boot-features-jsp-limitations

There some other documentation & sample applications also in boot to instruct to create war file in this scenario.

I think this documentation is wrong, because Servlet 3.0 container will work as long as JSP saved in META-INF/resources folder. I have created a sample application here. (Test is failing due to some reason but application works)

https://github.com/kamoor/spring-boot/tree/master/spring-boot-samples/spring-boot-sample-tomcat7-jsp-jar

Requesting to update documentation and samples.

[wilkinsona]

I'm not sure that we should encourage people to do this until we've figured out #2451

[MetalheadOne]

Is there any update to this issue???

I'm really hoping to use embedded tomcat, but I've got a huge investment in JSPs that I don't want to re-write into thymeleaf so I can use embedded. I know I can just use a WAR file, but part of the coolness of Spring Boot is the ability to go containerless.

thank you.

[wilkinsona]

Using a war file and going containerless are not mutually exclusive. You can use an executable war file (launched with java -jar) and JSPs will work.

[jbcpollak]

I tried the META-INF/resources hack and it seemed to resolve the JSPs, however I get errors with the taglibs:

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: The absolute uri: http://www.springframework.org/tags cannot be resolved in either web.xml or the jar files deployed with this application
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.DefaultErrorHandler.jspError(DefaultErrorHandler.java:55) ~[tomcat-embed-jasper-8.0.28.jar!/:8.0.28]
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.dispatch(ErrorDispatcher.java:277) ~[tomcat-embed-jasper-8.0.28.jar!/:8.0.28]
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.jspError(ErrorDispatcher.java:75) ~[tomcat-embed-jasper-8.0.28.jar!/:8.0.28]
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.TagLibraryInfoImpl.generateTldResourcePath(TagLibraryInfoImpl.java:243) ~[tomcat-embed-jasper-8.0.28.jar!/:8.0.28]
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.TagLibraryInfoImpl.<init>(TagLibraryInfoImpl.java:124) ~[tomcat-embed-jasper-8.0.28.jar!/:8.0.28]
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.parseTaglibDirective(Parser.java:416) ~[tomcat-embed-jasper-8.0.28.jar!/:8.0.28]

[wilkinsona]

This is an abuse of META-INF/resources which is intended solely for serving static content. It may not work across all containers. See this thread for details.

[mdhhdm]

<resources>  
    <!-- 打包时将jsp文件拷贝到META-INF目录下-->  
    <resource>  
        <!-- 指定resources插件处理哪个目录下的资源文件 -->  
        <directory>src/main/webapp</directory>  
        <!--注意此次必须要放在此目录下才能被访问到-->  
        <targetPath>META-INF/resources</targetPath>  
        <includes>  
            <include>**/**</include>  
        </includes>  
    </resource>  
    <resource>  
        <directory>src/main/resources</directory>  
        <includes>  
            <include>**/**</include>  
        </includes>  
        <filtering>false</filtering>  
    </resource>  
</resources>