title: I cannot deploy a basic html file in apache tomcat
body: <p>I am making a small website as my first project. I have finalized to use Java Servlets and JSP for my Server-side scripting. I am learning it from O'Reilly's HeadFirst Servlets and JSP. I decided to use Apache-Tomcat as my web server and container. I downloaded it. I even have jdk 1.6 update 21. 
  I unzipped apache in C:
  It is running successfully as i get the default Tomcat home page when I type <a href="http://localhost:8080" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://localhost:8080</a>  in my browser.</p>
  
  <p>In chapter 3 there is a small project called beer.
  So I tried to make it.
  I created a directory called beer under webapps <code>C:\apache-tomcat-7.0.0\webapps\beer</code>. Inside it to just check the basics I created a html file called <code>form.html</code>. But when I try to access it via the browser <code>http://localhost:8080/beer/form.html</code> I get the following error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>HTTP Status 404 - /beer/form.html</p>
    
    <p>type Status report</p>
    
    <p>message /beer/form.html</p>
    
    <p>description The requested resource
    (/beer/form.html) is not available.</p>
    
    <p>Apache Tomcat/7.0.0</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I have even tried using tomcat 6, but to no use.</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Thank you for replying...
  Actually my doubt is..that here i am trying to access a .html file which is not a servlet so does it even require a Deployment description????</p>
  
  <p>well, there is only 1 servlet i planned to make (initially)....the one which is mentioned in the form (action= "....") in the html file i made....
  so i thought of checking the basic html file before i deployed a servlet....btw...if i have to include the html file also in the DD, then what should i write in place of ServletName in the xml code u gave?
  here are the contents of my web.xml (i modified it as u said...but dunno what to write in the Servlet Name)</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;
   &lt;web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd" version="2.4"&gt;
      &lt;servlet&gt;
          &lt;servlet-name&gt;html page&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
          &lt;servlet-class&gt;form&lt;/servlet-class&gt;
      &lt;/servlet&gt;
      &lt;servlet-mapping&gt;
        &lt;servlet-name&gt;html page&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
        &lt;url-pattern&gt;/beer/form.html&lt;/url-pattern&gt;
     &lt;/servlet-mapping&gt;
  
  
      &lt;servlet&gt;
          &lt;servlet-name&gt;Ch3 Beer&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
          &lt;servlet-class&gt;com.example.web.BeerSelect&lt;/servlet-class&gt;
      &lt;/servlet&gt;
      &lt;servlet-mapping&gt;
          &lt;servlet-name&gt;Ch3 Beer&lt;/servlet-name&gt;
          &lt;url-pattern&gt;/SelectBeer.do&lt;/url-pattern&gt;
      &lt;/servlet-mapping&gt;
  &lt;/web-app&gt;
  </code></pre>