HttpRequest maximum allowable size in tomcat?

The connector section has the parameter

maxPostSize

The maximum size in bytes of the POST which will be handled by the container FORM URL parameter parsing. The limit can be disabled by setting this attribute to a value less than or equal to 0. If not specified, this attribute is set to 2097152 (2 megabytes).

Another Limit is:

maxHttpHeaderSize The maximum size of the request and response HTTP header, specified in bytes. If not specified, this attribute is set to 4096 (4 KB).

You find them in

$TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml

The full answer

1. The default (fresh install of tomcat)

When you download tomcat from their official website (of today that's tomcat version 9.0.26), all the apps you installed to tomcat can handle HTTP requests of unlimited size, given that the apps themselves do not have any limits on request size.

However, when you try to upload an app in tomcat's manager app, that app has a default war file limit of 50MB. If you're trying to install Jenkins for example which is 77 MB as ot today, it will fail.

2. Configure tomcat's per port http request size limit

Tomcat itself has size limit for each port, and this is defined in conf\server.xml. This is controlled by maxPostSize attribute of each Connector(port). If this attribute does not exist, which it is by default, there is no limit on the request size.

To add a limit to a specific port, set a byte size for the attribute. For example, the below config for the default 8080 port limits request size to 200 MB. This means that all the apps installed under port 8080 now has the size limit of 200MB

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
           connectionTimeout="20000"
           redirectPort="8443"
           maxPostSize="209715200" />

3. Configure app level size limit

After passing the port level size limit, you can still configure app level limit. This also means that app level limit should be less than port level limit. The limit can be done through annotation within each servlet, or in the web.xml file. Again, if this is not set at all, there is no limit on request size.

To set limit through java annotation

@WebServlet("/uploadFiles")
@MultipartConfig( fileSizeThreshold = 0, maxFileSize = 209715200, maxRequestSize = 209715200)
public class FileUploadServlet extends HttpServlet {

    public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {
        // ...
    }
}

To set limit through web.xml

<web-app>
  ...
  <servlet>
    ...
    <multipart-config>
      <file-size-threshold>0</file-size-threshold>
      <max-file-size>209715200</max-file-size>
      <max-request-size>209715200</max-request-size>
    </multipart-config>
    ...
  </servlet>
  ...
</web-app>

4. Appendix - If you see file upload size error when trying to install app through Tomcat's Manager app

Tomcat's Manager app (by default localhost:8080/manager) is nothing but a default web app. By default that app has a web.xml configuration of request limit of 50MB. To install (upload) app with size greater than 50MB through this manager app, you have to change the limit. Open the manager app's web.xml file from webapps\manager\WEB-INF\web.xml and follow the above guide to change the size limit and finally restart tomcat.

You have to modify two possible limits:

In conf\server.xml

<Connector port="80" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443"
                maxPostSize="67589953" />

In webapps\manager\WEB-INF\web.xml

<multipart-config>
  <!-- 52MB max -->
  <max-file-size>52428800</max-file-size>
  <max-request-size>52428800</max-request-size>
  <file-size-threshold>0</file-size-threshold>
</multipart-config>