posted by Stacey Schneider on January 23, 2012 10:47 AM

The Apache Tomcat team announces the immediate availability of Apache Tomcat 7.0.25

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This release includes numerous bug fixes and several new features compared to version 7.0.23. The notable new features include:

• Align the Servlet 3.0 implementation with the changes defined in the first maintenance release (also known as Rev. A.). See the JCP documentation for a detailed list of changes.
• Add support for connectors to automatically select a free port to bind to. This is useful when embedding and for testing.
• Update to Commons Pool 1.5.7, Commons Daemon 1.0.8 and Eclipse JDT compiler 3.7.1.

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posted by chanthing on December 21, 2011 05:48 AM

1. Introduction

My last article for Tomcat Expert described various aspects of the Valve construct of Apache Tomcat: some basics about how to implement and configure a valve and an example of where things could go wrong if you were unaware of the operational details. For those of you who don’t remember (or didn’t read the article in the first place), the key takeaway was that because Tomcat valves are maintained as a chain, the order in which the valves are added to the configuration (typically in conf/server.xml) is significant, and the code that implements the filter must conclude with a call to invoke the next filter in the chain.

This time we’re going to lighten things up a bit with a general survey of what valves are available and how one might put them to use. Given the imminent arrival of the winter holiday season, one might think of it as the Apache Tomcat Valve Gift Catalog. Peruse it and find just the right gift for your favorite Tomcat administrator.

For each valve, I’ll describe its functionality, the most important configuration parameters, and point out any configuration subtleties that might not be apparent from the stock documentation. that can be found at http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/valve.html. If there are any less well-known attributes or “secret” parameters associated with the valve, I’ll describe them.

2. Request Logging

2.1 Access Log Valve

The AccessLogValve can be configured at the context, host, or engine level and will log requests made to that container to a file. Attributes of AccessLogValve control the directory, the filename, and the format of the data to be written, including the ability to write information about headers (incoming and outgoing), cookies, and session or request attributes.

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