Java – How do I embed Tomcat into a Spring Framework MVC application?

I have created the required config/Controller class. But it’s not clear to me how I should orchestrate these classes to run tomcat instances. I know that for spring boot, this is a problem with using SpringApplication.run(..) But I’m trying to explore alternatives that were used before Spring Boot. I’m a bit new to the Spring Framework, please forgive my ignorance. I also don’t use any Java-only XML configuration

public class SpittrWebAppInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer
{

@Override //....
protected String[] getServletMappings(){
    return new String[] { "/" }; 
}

@Override //...
protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses(){
    return new Class<?>[] { RootConfig.class };
}

@Override //.....
protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses(){
    return new Class<?>[] { WebConfig.class };
}
}

I’ve created a Controller

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class HomeController {

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String home(){
        return "home";
    }

POM file:

    <dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
        <version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        <version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>junit</groupId>
        <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
        <version>4.12</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
        <version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
        <version>3.1.0</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Finally solved the problem I was having. I added an embedded instance of Tomcat to my POM as recommended by VitalyZ. I configured the embedded tomcat instance in a new class.

Add the following to my POM file

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
        <version>8.5.15</version>
    </dependency>

A new class named Application.java is created

public class Application {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

String webAppDirLocation = "src/main/";
        Tomcat tomcat = new Tomcat();

Set Port #
        tomcat.setPort(8080);

StandardContext ctx = (StandardContext) tomcat.addWebapp("/", new File(webAppDirLocation).getAbsolutePath());

tomcat.start();
        tomcat.getServer().await();
    }
}