Why is tomcat refreshing pages permanently

Question

I am developing a spring mvc application on tomcat. the problem is that tomcat is refreshing pages each 2/3minutes, i can't see why ! my config is

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">

<context-param>
    <param-name>javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.fmt.localizationContext</param-name>
    <param-value>messages</param-value>
</context-param>
<context-param>
    <param-name>javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.fmt.fallbackLocale</param-name>
    <param-value>fr</param-value>
</context-param>
<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>classpath:portal.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>portal</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>
            <!--
                desactivation du context : utilisation du context parent
            -->
        </param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>portal</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.htm</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>portal</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/index.htm</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>  
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>portal</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.ajax</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

<filter>
    <filter-name>encodingFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>encoding</param-name>
        <param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>forceEncoding</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>encodingFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
    <dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>

<filter>
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

<session-config>
    <session-timeout>30</session-timeout>
</session-config>
<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.htm</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
<jsp-config>
    <jsp-property-group>
        <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
        <el-ignored>false</el-ignored>
        <page-encoding>UTF-8</page-encoding>
        <scripting-invalid>false</scripting-invalid>
    </jsp-property-group>
</jsp-config>

server.xml

      <Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps"
        unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true"
        xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">

    <!-- SingleSignOn valve, share authentication between web applications
         Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html -->
    <!--
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.authenticator.SingleSignOn" />
    -->

    <!-- Access log processes all example.
         Documentation at: /docs/config/valve.html -->
    <!--
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"  
           prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="common" resolveHosts="false"/>
    -->
    <!--
   <Context docBase="/home/badrux/Work/apache-tomcat-6.0.26/webapps/portal" path="/" reloadable="true"></Context>
    -->
   <Context path="/images" docBase="/root/collecte/images" reloadable="false"/>
   <Context path="/statics" docBase="/root/collecte/statics" reloadable="false"/>
   <Context path="/sitemap" docBase="/root/collecte/sitemap" reloadable="false"/>
  </Host>

thanks in advance

Answer 1

Server cannot refresh page by itself, there is no simple way of achieving that. If you really experiencing such behavior, then somewhere in your code you have an explicit refresh (redirect perhaps? JavaScript maybe?) or AJAX is forcing page reload.

Please note that I said "simple way". You could do that by more sophisticated technologies, but it is highly unlikely that you are doing that.

Answer 2

You have a:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="240" />

in the page header, which means you are telling the browser to refresh the page every 4 minutes (240 seconds).

As an additional observation, you're also creating a session when rendering the home page, which is probably an unnecessary overhead.