HTTP Status 500 Error instantiating servlet class

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Servlet returns “HTTP Status 404 The requested resource (/servlet) is not available” 4 answers

I am writing a web app and deploying it to the apache tomcat web container. I follow a simple tutorial from http://cse.csusb.edu/turner/java_web_programming/servlets/

and then end up getting this error. I am pasting snippets of and web.xml, website.xml and my code files respectively.

Structure:

web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<web-app
     xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee 
        http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"
     version="2.4">
   <servlet>
      <servlet-name>home</servlet-name>
      <servlet-class>website.web.HomeServlet</servlet-class>
   </servlet>
   <servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>home</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/home</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

HomeServlet.java

package website.web;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

public class HomeServlet extends HttpServlet {

    @Override
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) 
               throws ServletException, IOException {
                  PrintWriter writer = resp.getWriter();
                  writer.println("<h1>Hello, World!</h1>");
               }        
}

Error:

HTTP Status 500 - Error instantiating servlet class website.web.HomeServlet

type Exception report

message Error instantiating servlet class website.web.HomeServlet

description The server encountered an internal error that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

javax.servlet.ServletException: Error instantiating servlet class website.web.HomeServlet
    org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:502)
    org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:79)
    org.apache.catalina.valves.AbstractAccessLogValve.invoke(AbstractAccessLogValve.java:610)
    org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:518)
    org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1091)
    org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:668)
    org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11NioProtocol.java:223)
    org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1517)
    org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:1474)
    java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
    java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
root cause

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: website.web.HomeServlet
    org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoaderBase.loadClass(WebappClassLoaderBase.java:1305)
    org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoaderBase.loadClass(WebappClassLoaderBase.java:1157)
    org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:502)
    org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:79)
    org.apache.catalina.valves.AbstractAccessLogValve.invoke(AbstractAccessLogValve.java:610)
    org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:518)
    org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1091)
    org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:668)
    org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11NioProtocol.java:223)
    org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1517)
    org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:1474)
    java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142)
    java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617)
    org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
    java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

Answer 1

I think somethin wrong in this section:

<servlet-class>website.web.HomeServlet</servlet-class>

Instead try:

<servlet-class>website.HomeServlet</servlet-class>

Answer 2

First of all, your web.xml lists TestServlet as the class name for your server, as opposed to HomeServlet.

Second, it seems that although your HomeServlet class is in package website.web, it's physically located in a folder called website, not website/web. I would be surprised to see this even compile correctly?