tomcat - Where are compiled JSP Java (*__jsp.java) files?

Question

I am getting a javax.servlet.jsp.JspException in one of the jsp files that my website is trying to render (survey.jsp). However, the stack trace does not give me the the specific line in jsp where it fails but rather the line number where it fails in (survey_jsp.java:787), which seems to be the compiled JSP file. Where do I find such files, so that I know what line is throwing this exception?

Thanks

EDIT: These files live in the /work directory if you are using tomcat as Will suggested in the comment below.

Answer 1

The compiled JSP files are by default available in the /work folder of the Tomcat environment. There should be a subfolder Catalina which in turn has a subfolder representing the domain name which defaults to localhost. There in turn should be the project folder which in turn contains package hierarchy org.apache.jsp with therein the compiled JSP files.

Tomcat
 |-- backup
 |-- bin
 |-- conf
 |-- lib
 |-- logs
 |-- temp
 |-- webapps
 `-- work
      `-- Catalina
           `-- localhost
                `-- projectname
                     `-- org
                          `-- apache
                               `-- jsp
                                    |-- survey_jsp.class
                                    `-- survey_jsp.java    <--- here

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Unrelated to the concrete problem, there should be a root cause part in the stacktrace of the JspException which usually contains more detail about the real root cause of the problem. Read a bit further in the stacktrace. By the way, do you know that putting raw Java code in JSP files is considered a bad practice? It makes problems harder to debug as you encounter now.