Spring Boot REST Controller returns 404 when deployed on external tomcat 9 server

Question

I have a spring boot rest web application which works perfectly on the embedded server. However after following the steps mentioned in the is blog https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#howto-create-a-deployable-war-file, I got a 404 error message whan I send a resquest to a resource on the server.I have used java 1.8.0_212 locally and used java 1.8.0_131 and deployed my app on tomcat 9 on the server. One thing that's puzzling me is that the repositories which extends CrudRepository can be accessed. Below is my application's entry point.

@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.dbe.ref")
public class RefmsApplication extends SpringBootServletInitializer {

    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder builder) {
        return builder.sources(RefmsApplication.class);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(RefmsApplication.class, args);
    }

and also my pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.dbe.ref</groupId>
    <artifactId>refms</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <name>refms</name>
    <description>project for Rural electrification fund</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>LATEST</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
        <start-class>com.RefmsApplication</start-class>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.oracle</groupId>
            <artifactId>ojdbc6</artifactId>
            <version>11.2.0.4</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>jquery</artifactId>
            <version>2.2.1</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>angularjs</artifactId>
            <version>1.4.10</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>bootstrap</artifactId>
            <version>3.3.4</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
            <artifactId>font-awesome</artifactId>
            <version>4.7.0</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>eu.michael-simons</groupId>
            <artifactId>wro4j-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
            <version>0.3.4</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>net.sf.jasperreports</groupId>
            <artifactId>jasperreports</artifactId>
            <version>6.4.0</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.poi</groupId>
            <artifactId>poi</artifactId>
            <version>3.14</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>net.sourceforge.dynamicreports</groupId>
            <artifactId>dynamicreports-core</artifactId>
            <version>5.0.0</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <finalName>refms</finalName>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Here is part of the log:

2017-09-19 10:38:20.564  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean   : Mapping filter: 'errorPageFilter' to: [/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.565  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean   : Mapping filter: 'characterEncodingFilter' to: [/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.566  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean   : Mapping filter: 'hiddenHttpMethodFilter' to: [/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.568  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean   : Mapping filter: 'httpPutFormContentFilter' to: [/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.568  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean   : Mapping filter: 'requestContextFilter' to: [/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.571  INFO 6660 --- [           main] .s.DelegatingFilterProxyRegistrationBean : Mapping filter: 'springSecurityFilterChain' to: [/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.571  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.FilterRegistrationBean   : Mapping filter: 'configurableWroFilter' to urls: [/wro4j/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.572  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.ServletRegistrationBean  : Mapping servlet: 'dispatcherServletRegistration' to [/refms/*]
2017-09-19 10:38:20.573  INFO 6660 --- [           main] o.s.b.w.servlet.ServletRegistrationBean  : Mapping servlet: 'dispatcherServlet' to [/]

Answer 1

There is a little difference when you deploy application on embedded server and external server by default.

With embedded server you can access you application by using:

http://localhost:<port>/<resourceName>

While if you deploy war in another container then you need to add application name with version like:

http://localhost:<port>/<applicationNameWithVersion>/<resourceName>

For example if you deploy this example then URL for embedded server is:

http://localhost:8080/greeting

And URL for Externally deployed application if like:

http://localhost:8999/gs-rest-service-0.1.0/greeting

Note: This URL is of my application server so it may have some changes for yours.

Comment if you need help.

Answer 2

Make sure you have added context path to your spring Boot application. Typically it is in application.properties file inside src\main\resources. In that properties file, add the properties:

server.contextPath=/refms

You should be able to access your application using the bellow link localhost:8080/refms/api/account/authenticate or localhost:8080/refms-xxxx/api/account/authenticate ( where xxxx is your artifact version )

Answer 3

in your comments you mentioned /authenticate is giving 404, this is because you have set the login process URL to “authenticate”. It’s the URL that the login form is posted to. If unspecified, it defaults to /login. Spring Security framework intercepts that URL and gets login and password parameter.

Answer 4

When you deploy your application into Tomcat the URL depends on the context path under which your application gets deployed. Most of the time this is an exact match with the name of the war file which you put into the Tomcat 'webapps' directory. You can see the name by looking at your 'webapps' directory. Your war file is probably also expended into a directory by now.

Since you've put a finalName into your maven build section, your war file should be named: refms.war, so your application will run under:

http://host:port/refms/

My assumption is that you did not rename the war file to ROOT.war before you copied it into tomcat, so your application will not be running on:

http://host:port/

If you would do so your application will run similar to the embedded Tomcat instance; on the root context.

From your log file I can see that your authentication endpoint is mapped on /refms/

Mapping servlet: 'dispatcherServletRegistration' to [/refms/*]

This is relative to the context root of your application. So in case you did not rename your war file, the authentication endpoint on which you receive a 404 is probably going to be under:

http://localhost:8080/refms/refms/api/account/authenticate

Answer 5

Check if the

<build>
     <finalName>refms</finalName>
         ...
</build>

in the pom.xml corresponds with the

server.contextPath=/refms

in the application.properties and check the

<Context path="/refms"/>

in the context.xml. Perhaps your root context in tomcat after deploy was different.

Additionally, change this dependence

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId> 
</dependency>

by this

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>   
</dependency>

for external tomcat

Answer 6

Check the root package in src/main/java, it should be the same as the package name mentioned in the POM groupid ie. com.dbe.ref if there is any mismatch than the same issue occurs.