Intellij Idea Tomcat and Spring MVC template

Question

I have just started to play with Spring MVC. I installed Intellij Idea and Tomcat server and then created a new project from SpringMVC template. When I run it I got the error:

Servlet.init() for servlet mvc-dispatcher threw exception

I solved it by changing Java jdk from version 1.8 to 1.7. When I run it then, I got this error:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.jsp.WEB_002dINF.pages.hello_jsp

To fix it I had to remove:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.5</version>
    </dependency>

from my pom.xml file and now it's working. Can someone tell me why this template won't work without these changes?

Answer 1

Without more detail about the error you got, I can't answer why you needed to change the Java version.

As for the servlet-api dependency, that is because Tomcat has its own implementation of the servlet-api included. So there was a clash. What you will want to do is add the dependency back into your POM with a scope of provided. That way it is there for your IDE to use as well as at build time. (Unless of course you are getting the servlet-api from some where else such as the javaee-api dependency).

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
    <version>2.5</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>