Servlet – welcome-file-list in web.xml

Last Updated : 30 Jan, 2022

The web.xml file’s welcome-file-list property is used to establish a list of welcome files. If you don’t supply a file name while loading the project in the browser, the tag <welcome-file-list> is used to define the files that will be called by the server by default. The server looks for the welcome file in the following sequence by default:

welcome-file-list in web.xml
index.html
index.htm
index.jsp

The server returns a 404 error if none of these files are found.

Code for the welcome-file-list attribute in web.xml

XML

<web-app>   
 ....   
  <welcome-file-list> 
    <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file> 
    <welcome-file>index.htm</welcome-file> 
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file> 
    <welcome-file>default.html</welcome-file> 
    <welcome-file>default.htm</welcome-file> 
    <welcome-file>default.jsp</welcome-file> 
  </welcome-file-list>  
</web-app>

Working of welcome-file-list

The welcome-file-list is the first thing that the webserver checks for. If it exists, it searches for the file specified in the initial welcome-file. If this file exists, control is sent to it; otherwise, the webserver moves on to the next welcome file, and so on. If the welcome-file-list does not exist, or if the files defined in the welcome-file-list do not exist, the server will look at the default welcome files, which are index.html, index.htm, index.jsp, default.html, default.htm, and default.jsp in that order.

Example

web.xml

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
         xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee" 
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee 
                             http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_4_0.xsd"  
         id="WebApp_ID" version="4.0"> 
    
  <display-name>WelcomeFileList</display-name> 
    <welcome-file-list> 
        <welcome-file>welcome.html</welcome-file> 
    </welcome-file-list> 
</web-app>

welcome.html

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01  
Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> 
<html> 
<head> 
<title>welcome</title> 
</head> 
    <body> 
        <h1>Welcome to GeeksForGeeks</h1>   
    </body> 
</html>