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Tomcat 7 comes with a lot of new features, like Servlet 3.0 specification, filter for preventing CSRF attacks, and more and more features. One feature that I really like is the simplicity that has acquired embedding a Tomcat into an application.

First of all you are not required to download all archives; there is a separated link for downloading only required jars

(http://apache.rediris.es/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.6/src/apache-tomcat-7.0.6-src.tar.gz).

Second one is how easy is to create a tomcat instance and add the directory where web application is deployed.

String webApp = ...;

String tomcatDir = ...;

Tomcat tomcat = new Tomcat();

tomcat.setPort(8080);

tomcat.setBaseDir(tomcatDir);

tomcat.setHostname("localhost");

tomcat.addWebapp("/", webApp);

tomcat.start();

tomcat.getServer().await();

Only three sections:

• Configure Tomcat. The base directory for temp files.
• Adding information about where web application is deployed and which context path should serve it.
• Starting server and waits until application is closed.

I have not found in Tomcat documentation something like Jetty that you can set a War file and container is the responsible for unpacking it. I think that in case of Tomcat some actions should be taken by developer for unpacking it.

I am not going to discuss about what embedded server is better, if Jetty or Tomcat, each one have their features, and their advantages and disadvantages, this post is only written as a resource for teaching how to embed tomcat into an application.