Tomcat
Supported Tomcat versions
The following versions of Tomcat are supported:
2023.1
8.5, 9, 10
2019.2, 2020.1, 2021.1, 2022.1
8.5, 9
2019.1
8.5, 9
2018.2
8.0, 8.5, 9
Tomcat 8.0 not recommended, see below
2018.1
8.0, 8.5, 9
Tomcat 8.0 not recommended, see below
2017.2
7, 8.0, 8.5, 9
Tomcat 8.0 not recommended, see below
2017.1
6, 7, 8.0, 8.5
Tomcat 6 and 8.0 not recommended, see below
Notes about older versions of Tomcat:
The Apache Tomcat team has announced that support for Apache Tomcat 6.0.x ended on December 31, 2016.
Tomcat 6 isn't supported by Orbeon Forms starting with version 2017.2.
The Apache Tomcat team has announced that support for Apache Tomcat 8.0.x ended on June 30, 2019.
Tomcat 8.0 isn't supported by Orbeon Forms starting with version 2019.1, but Tomcat 8.5 is supported.
TIFF support is not available when using Tomcat 6 (see #2717).
Setup
We assume below that TOMCAT_HOME
represents the location of your Tomcat installation.
If using Orbeon Forms PE, make sure the license.xml
file is in place.
Quick setup
Create a new
TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/orbeon
directory.Unzip
orbeon.war
in theorbeon
directory you just created. So now you should have a directoryTOMCAT_HOME/webapps/orbeon/WEB-INF
.You can now start Tomcat, and access
http://localhost:8080/orbeon/
to test your installation (replacinglocalhost
and8080
with the host name and port number of your Tomcat installation if different from the default).
Optional steps
Custom context within server.xml
Edit TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml
, and inside the <Host>
create a <Context>
as follows, changing the value of the docBase
attribute as appropriate on your system. Make sure the <Context>
element is within the <Host>
element. Tomcat will not report an error if your context is misplaced in the file, and that will cause it to be ignored and, in particular, datasources might not be taken into account.
Datasource setup
If you have a JDBC datasource, add it inside the <Context>
, as in the following example:
URIEncoding
We recommend you add the URIEncoding="UTF-8"
attribute on the <Connector>
element, in your server.xml
, as recommended in the Tomcat FAQ. This will ensure that all characters get properly decoded on the URL, which is especially important if you're using non-ASCII characters in the app or form name in Form Builder.
Form Runner authentication
To setup Form Runner authentication:
Open
TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/orbeon/WEB-INF/web.xml
and uncomment thesecurity-constraint
,login-config
andsecurity-role
declarations at the end of the file.Open
TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml
and make sure there is a<Realm>
enabled. For example, by default with Tomcat 7:Edit
TOMCAT_HOME/conf/tomcat-users.xml
and replace the content of the file with:Enumerate the roles in the following property:
BASIC or DIGEST authentication
For BASIC or DIGEST authentication, add the following <Valve>
element within the <Context>
element corresponding to the Orbeon Forms web application in Tomcat's configuration. Remove this <Valve>
element if switching to FORM authentication, as leaving it will enforce BASIC or DIGEST authentication regardless of the configuration in web.xml
.
Last updated