Java Web Application on startup

Question

Is there a way to execute java code, when a Java EE (Java web project) starts up (or receives a first request)? I know that servlets have init() methods, but is there such method for an entire application?

Answer 1

Have a class that

implements ServletContextListener

and in your web.xml

<listener>
    <listener-class> myPackage.MyServletContextListener </listener-class>
</listener>

see http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/api/javax/servlet/ServletContextListener.html

and override

void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce)