maven - Spring Boot War deployed to Tomcat

Question

I am trying to deploy a Spring Boot app to Tomcat, because I want to deploy to AWS. I created a WAR file, but it does not seem to run on Tomcat, even though it is visible.

Details:
0. Here is my app:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public class App {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SampleController.class, args);
    }
}

@Controller
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public class SampleController {
    @RequestMapping("/help")
    @ResponseBody
    String home() {
        String input = "Hi! Please use 'tag','check' and 'close' resources.";
        return input;
    }
}

application.properties has following:

server.port=${port:7777}

1. After reading a number of pages and question-answers I added following to my POM:

   http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> 4.0.0

   <groupId>com.niewlabs</groupId>
   <artifactId>highlighter</artifactId>
   <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
   
   <packaging>war</packaging>
   
   <properties>
       <java.version>1.8</java.version>
   </properties>    
   <parent>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
       <version>1.1.9.RELEASE</version>
   </parent>    
   <dependencies>
       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
           <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
       </dependency>
       <dependency>
           <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
           <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
           <scope>provided</scope>
       </dependency>
   </dependencies>
   

2. I ran"mvn package"and got WAR file (size 250Mb), which I put into "webapps" folder.

3. I started Tomcat and am able to see my app listed, in my case "/highlighter-1.0-SNAPSHOT".
4. Clicking on the link for the app results in "Status 404" page.
5. When I run Spring Boot app just by itself, without container it runs on localhost:7777, but there is nothing there when I run it in Tomcat.

Update: There is another reference. Not sure how useful it is.

Answer 1

This guide explains in detail how to deploy Spring Boot app on Tomcat:
http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#howto-create-a-deployable-war-file

Essentially I needed to add following class:

public class WebInitializer extends SpringBootServletInitializer {   
    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
        return application.sources(App.class);
    }    
}

Also I added following property to POM:

<properties>        
    <start-class>mypackage.App</start-class>
</properties>