If you are facing this error after importing an existing maven project into your eclipse IDE, then it means that http-servlet is not available in the project’s class path and you must include it.
Error looks like this.

Solution
To include http-servlet into your class path, you have two options:
1) Add target runtime
In this solution, you can add desired server runtime into your application as project facet. As runtime servers have already servlet runtime dependencies, they get included into your project and hence error is gone.
2) Add maven dependency
Another option is include the servlet dependency through maven itself. This will also fix the error.
<dependency> <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId> <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId> <version>2.5</version> </dependency>
Happy Learning !!
Saikiran
Worked like charm 😉
Andy Rodriguez
Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuu it worked for me!
sree
It Worked but after using this solution my tomcat server is not working.
Henri
Thank so much! It worked!
Andy uwem
thank you so much it worked for me
Tanveer Ray
I tried this but did not work. do we have any other solution?
Shivam
Thank you. worked for me.
José Compadre Junior
Thanks for this tutorial. Saved my day!
sulabh
Thank you very much.
Pooja Lakkihal
thankyu so much man..
Deepak Maddeshiya
Thanks !
Prajakta
Thanks Lokesh………….
Doug
What is the difference between the two solutions?
Tarun Punjabi
Thanks a lot man !!!!
Milward Kadzitaye
Thanks man Solved my problem
Jyoti Gurjar
Thanks for Posting this solution. It worked for me.
Lokesh Kumar
27-Jan-2016 12:17:06.629 SEVERE [http-nio-8080-exec-13] org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process Error processing request
java.lang.IllegalStateException: The resources may not be accessed if they are not currently started
at org.apache.catalina.webresources.StandardRoot.validate(StandardRoot.java:232)
at org.apache.catalina.webresources.StandardRoot.getResource(StandardRoot.java:199)
at org.apache.catalina.webresources.StandardRoot.getResource(StandardRoot.java:193)
at org.apache.catalina.mapper.Mapper.internalMapWrapper(Mapper.java:918)
at org.apache.catalina.mapper.Mapper.internalMap(Mapper.java:808)
at org.apache.catalina.mapper.Mapper.map(Mapper.java:667)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.postParseRequest(CoyoteAdapter.java:862)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:521)
at org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1078)
at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:655)
at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11NioProtocol.java:222)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1566)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:1523)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Lokesh Gupta
When you get this error?
Lokesh Kumar
After configure whole project in eclipse, i included >javax.servlet dependency. Then found the above error with code 500 on UI- Network.
samir
Great Man. Problem resolved.
Sanku
Thank you..its work for me
Marumo
Thanks for the solution to the problem “The superclass “javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet” was not found on the Java Build Path in Eclipse”
Lokesh Gupta
Glad it was useful for you.