Install Apache Tomcat on Windows

In this tutorial we install Apache Tomcat on Windows.

1. Requirements

Apache Tomcat 8 core binary zip file. Older versions of Tomcat are possible too, but remember the JDK requirements.
JDK 1.7 or higher. Older versions are sufficiant for installing Tomcat 7 (JDK 1.6) or Tomcat 6 (JDK 1.5).
Windows 🙂

Unzip the Apache Tomcat binary zip file to a folder of your choice: We use D:\WEB\apache-tomcat-8.0.22.
Add unzipped folder to the system environment variables:
1. Press Winkey + Pause or click on Start ⇒ Right click on Computer ⇒ Properties.
  Click on Advanced System Settings to edit PATH variables
2. Go to the Advanced tab.
3. Click the “Environment Variables” Button.
  Click on Add to create a new System Variable
4. Add the tomcat path to the CATALINA_HOME system variable. We use: D:\WEB\apache-tomcat-8.0.22. From now on we refer to the tomcat home folder as %CATALINA_HOME%.
  Enter Variable name (must be CATALINA_HOME) and your path to the tomcat folder.
While editing the environment variables, make sure the JAVA_HOME environment variable exists. We use: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_45\jre.

Go into the Apache Tomcat folder. We use: D:\WEB\apache-tomcat-8.0.22.
Switch to the bin folder.
Double click startup.bat to start the Apache Tomcat server (to stop just click shutdown.bat, but keep it running for now).

Open a Browser and enter: http://localhost:8080/
If you see the Apache Tomcat Window with the following message, Tomcat was successfully installed:

If you’re seeing this, you’ve successfully installed Tomcat. Congratulations!

The Apache Tomcat server was not installed as service, so you have to start it every time you want to develope.
As an alternative, you can choose the 32-bit/64-bit Windows Service Installer.
If you want to integrate Tomcat in your Eclipse IDE, you can find a tutorial here.