welcome-file-list tag in web.xml file of Project

Have you ever seen <welcome-file-list> tag in your web.xml file and wondering what it is? In this text, I will explain what is this tag and why we use it.

The tag <welcome-file-list> is used for specifying the files that needs to be invoked by server by default, if you do not specify a file name while loading the project on browser.

For e.g. You have created a project named “MyServletProject” and you have few html pages and servlet classes defined in the project. However in browser you have given the url like this:

http://localhost:8080/MyServletProject

Usually we give the complete path like this:http://localhost:8080/MyServletProject/index.html. However if you have given the path like above then the webserver will look for the <welcome-file-list> tag in your project’s web.xml file. Lets say you have the following content in your web.xml file:

<web-app>
....
<welcome-file-list>
   <welcome-file>myhome.htm</welcome-file>
   <welcome-file>myindex.htm</welcome-file>
   <welcome-file>mydefaultpage.htm</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
....
</web-app>

Based on the welcome file list, server would look for the myhome.htm page if this doesn’t exist then the second welcome file myindex.html and so on till it finds a valid welcome file.

Note: If the <welcome-file-list> tag is not defined in web.xml or the welcome files defined in the <welcome-file> tags does not exist then the server would look for the following files in the given sequence:
1) index.html
2) index.htm
3) index.jsp

I hope I covered everything related to this tag. Should you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below.