Explain Deployment Descriptors

Question: Explain Deployment Descriptors?

Answer: Java web applications use a deployment descriptor file to determine how URLs map to servlets, which URLs require authentication, and other information. This file is named web.xml and resides in the app’s WAR under the WEB-INF/ directory. web.xml is part of the servlet standard for web applications. (E learning Portal)

A web application’s deployment descriptor describes the classes, resources, and configuration of the application and how the web server uses them to serve web requests. When the webserver receives a request for the application, it uses the deployment descriptor to map the URL of the request to the code that ought to handle the request.

The deployment descriptor is a file named web.xml. It resides in the app’s WAR under the WEB-INF/ directory. The file is an XML file whose root element is.