[FIXED] How do I configure TomCat and its Artifacts in IntelliJ to display a different jsp (through SpringMVC) than the autogen "index.jsp"?

Issue

I have been taking this Spring course on Udemy and the instructor uses Eclipse JEE since it is free. However I have recently gotten IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition and naturally I would rather use that. I started a new Spring MVC project and I discovered that configuring Tomcat had an extra step of adding an Artifact (I feel this may be important to finding a solution) which Eclipse JEE doesn't seem to be concerned with. I have no idea what that is so I just went with the Web Application Exploded artifact. The URL used is http://localhost:8080/SpringMVCDemo_war_exploded/. When I run the Tomcat Server this URL displays index.jsp automatically. This is my problem. I want it to display a different jsp file. Namely main-menu.jsp found in web/WEB-INF/view/. Let me explain a little more.

I have a HomeController class annotated with @Controller and a method that returns "main-menu" as a String which through the dispatcher-servlet.xml, Spring will prepend WEB-INF/view/ and append .jsp. In theory this should display the main-menu.jsp page found in WEB-INF/view/. However, index.jsp is always displayed by default and I can't even get a link that navigates to main-menu.jsp to work. I feel that there is something inconsistent with the URL used for the Exploded Artifact and the @RequestMapping("/") annotated method in my HomeController that returns "main-menu".

The program runs fine in Eclipse JEE. My hunch is that I need to do more configuring with The Tomcat Server and the Web Application Exploded artifact but I don't know anything about Artifacts and the IntelliJ documentation explains Artifacts like you already know what an Artifact is. Has anyone used Spring MVC in IntelliJ IDEA professional edition? How do I properly configure the server to respond to my @RequestMapping? If possible I would like to leave the @RequestMapping as is to make it easier to follow along in the course. Below is the project structure and all files in question

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web- 
   app_3_1.xsd"
         id="WebApp_ID" version="3.1">

    <display-name>DisplayName</display-name>

    <absolute-ordering/>

    <!-- Spring MVC Configs -->

    <!-- Step 1: Configure Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/dispatcher-servlet.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <!-- Step 2: Set up URL mapping for Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

dispatcher-servlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

    <!-- Step 3: Add support for component scanning -->
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.luv2code.springdemo" />

    <!-- Step 4: Add support for conversion, formatting and validation support -->
    <mvc:annotation-driven/>

    <!-- Step 5: Define Spring MVC view resolver -->
    <bean
            class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/view" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>

</beans>

HomeController.java

package com.luv2code.springdemo.mvc;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class HomeController {
    @RequestMapping("/")
    public String showPage() {
        return "main-menu";
    }
}

Solution

Delete index.jsp file from the project. It has priority over request mappings.

Don't have any files that would be considered default pages (index.html, index.jsp, default.html, etc).

Answered By - CrazyCoder