How to config Tomcat to serve images from an exter

Question

How can i use Tomcat to serve image files from a public folder outside webapps? I dont want to use a 2nd Apache fileserver on a different port since the image files are part of the same app. And i dont want to create a symlink to the public folder inside webapps since my app is deployed as a war file....Is there a simpler solution similar to using default servlet for static content inside webapps, for static content outside outside webapps

Answer 1

After none of solutions based on defining XMLs worked for me, I found this answer very helpful. Took about a minute, and a small code change: I modified this line

this.basePath = getServletContext().getRealPath(getInitParameter("basePath"));

into

this.basePath = getInitParameter("basePath");

Answer 2

You could have a redirect servlet. In you web.xml you'd have:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>images</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.example.images.ImageServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>images</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/images/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

All your images would be in "/images", which would be intercepted by the servlet. It would then read in the relevant file in whatever folder and serve it right back out. For example, say you have a gif in your images folder, c:\Server_Images\smilie.gif. In the web page would be <img src="http:/example.com/app/images/smilie.gif".... In the servlet, HttpServletRequest.getPathInfo() would yield "/smilie.gif". Which the servlet would find in the folder.