What are WEB-INF and META-INF directories?

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If you're looking at a web application on your Tomcat server you'll see all the files that you would expect - things like an index.html (or perhaps an index.jsp), images, and perhaps style sheets, a robots.txt and a favicon.ico. You'll also see a WEB-INF directory, and perhaps a META-INF directory that are unbrowsable. What are they?

The META-INF directories related to .jar files ... they contain the manifest (list of contents) of a jar and are created when you write a jar file. Then when you unpack it, the directory appears. Web applications, held in .war files, are just special cases of .jars. You should (in theory) be able to safely delete your META-INF directory and content from an installed web application.

The WEB-INF directory contains a heirarcy in which you'll find the necessary configuration information for your web application, and all the class files for your servlets and classes that are called up by your JSPs (Java Server Pages). The WEB-INF directory is a vital component of your web application, which will not run without it!
(written 2007-05-18, updated 2007-05-21)

Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles

A653 - Web Application Deployment - Tomcat - Configuring Web Applications
  [465] Changing Tomcat's web.xml and reloading a web application - (2005-10-15)
  [479] New servlet from old - (2005-10-28)
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  [2088] Changing the 404 - file not found - page in Tomcat - (2009-03-18)
  [3044] Changing a Servlet - more that just editing and compiling - (2010-11-12)
  [3996] Tips on Tomcat - moving applications around - (2013-02-05)

A502 - Web Application Deployment - Java - Basic Tools
  [1562] Java Compiler - needs all classes, compiles them all too - (2008-03-03)
  [1771] More HowTo diagrams - MySQL, Tomcat and Java - (2008-08-24)
  [2153] Class Loading and Variable Conversion in Java - (2009-05-02)
  [2422] Looking inside Java classes - javap and javadoc - (2009-09-25)
  [2859] Using java, javac, jar, and CLASSPATH - a simple example - (2010-07-07)
  [3151] Disassembling Python and Java - previously compiled code - (2011-01-29)
  [3819] Packing a tar, jar or war file - best practise - (2012-07-26)
  [4412] Java -making sure you have the right versions - (2015-02-02)

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