The Webapp Connector

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Webapp connector is now deprecated. Use the Coyote JK Connector with JK or mod_proxy_ajp instead.

The Webapp Connector element represents a Connector component that communicates with a web connector via the WARP protocol. This is used for cases where you wish to invisibly integrate Tomcat 4 into an existing (or new) Apache installation, and you want Apache to handle the static content contained in the web application, and/or utilize Apache's SSL processing. In many application environments, this will result in better overall performance than running your applications under Tomcat stand-alone using the HTTP/1.1 Connector. However, the only way to know for sure whether it will provide better performance for your application is to try it both ways.

FIXME - general description of what happens at server startup time when you have the WARP Connector configured.

Common Attributes

All implementations of Connector support the following attributes: Attribute Description className Java class name of the implementation to use. This class must implement the org.apache.catalina.Connector interface. You must specify the standard value defined below. enableLookups Set to true if you want calls to request.getRemoteHost() to perform DNS lookups in order to return the actual host name of the remote client. Set to false to skip the DNS lookup and return the IP address in String form instead (thereby improving performance). By default, DNS lookups are disabled. redirectPort If this Connector is supporting non-SSL requests, and a request is received for which a matching <security-constraint> requires SSL transport, Catalina will automatically redirect the request to the port number specified here. scheme Set this attribute to the name of the protocol you wish to have returned by calls to request.getScheme(). For example, you would set this attribute to "https" for an SSL Connector. The default value is "http". secure Set this attribute to true if you wish to have calls to request.isSecure() to return true for requests received by this Connector (you would want this on an SSL Connector). The default value is false. FIXME - Update the above descriptions for anything that the WARP Connector delegates to Apache.

Standard Implementation

The standard implementation of Webapp Connector is org.apache.catalina.connector.warp.WarpConnector. It supports the following additional attributes (in addition to the common attributes listed above): Attribute Description acceptCount The maximum queue length for incoming connection requests when all possible request processing threads are in use. Any requests received when the queue is full will be refused. The default value is 10. debug The debugging detail level of log messages generated by this component, with higher numbers creating more detailed output. If not specified, this attribute is set to zero (0). maxProcessors The maximum number of request processing threads to be created by this Connector, which therefore determines the maximum number of simultaneous requests that can be handled. If not specified, this attribute is set to 20. minProcessors The number of request processing threads that will be created when this Connector is first started. This attribute should be set to a value smaller than that set for maxProcessors. The default value is 5. port The TCP port number on which this Connector will create a server socket and await incoming connections. Your operating system will allow only one server application to listen to a particular port number on a particular IP address. appBase Set the applications base directory for Hosts created via WARP. The default value is "webapps".

WarpEngine

mod-webapp offers a specific Engine when running the Webapp Connector in its own service. This Engine allows webapp to create and to map the Hosts corresponding to the VirtualHost defined in the httpd.conf file. The standard implementation of Webapp Engine is org.apache.catalina.connector.warp.WarpEngine. It supports the standard Engine. attributes.

FIXME - Document any special features supported by the WARP Connector.