Tomcat in Intellij Idea Community Edition

Intellij Community does not offer Java application server integration. Your alternatives are

1. buying Intellij licence,
2. switching to Eclipse ;)
3. installing Smart Tomcat plugin https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9492, make following settings (image)
4. installing IDEA Jetty Runner plugin https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7505
5. running the application server from Maven, Gradle, whatever, as outlined in the other answers.

I personally installed the Jetty Runner plugin (Jetty is fine for me, I do not need Tomcat) and I am satisfied with this solution. I had to deal with IntelliJ idea - Jetty, report an exception, though.

Using Maven, try tomcat7-maven-plugin:

  <build>
          <plugins>
              <plugin>
                  <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
                  <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                  <version>2.2</version>
                  <configuration>
                      <path>/</path>
                      <contextFile>src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/config/app-config.xml</contextFile>
                      <mode>context</mode>
                      <charset>UTF-8</charset>
                      <warDirectory>target/${project.artifactId}-${project.version}</warDirectory>
                  </configuration>
              </plugin>
          </plugins>
  </build>

Run it using tomcat7:run-war

More goals here

If you are using maven, you can use this command mvn tomcat:run, but first you add in your pom.xml this structure into build tag, just like this:

<build>
    <finalName>mvn-webapp-test</finalName>
      <plugins>
          <plugin>
              <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
              <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
              <version>${maven.compiler.plugin.version}</version>
              <configuration>
                  <source>1.6</source>
                  <target>1.6</target>
              </configuration>
          </plugin>
      </plugins>
  </build>

Tomcat (Headless) can be integrated with IntelliJ Idea - Community edition.

Step-by-step instructions are as below:

1. Add tomcatX-maven-plugin to pom.xml

   <build>
       <plugins>
           <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
                <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.2</version>
                <configuration>
                    <path>SampleProject</path>
                </configuration>
           </plugin>
       </plugins>
   </build>
   

2. Add new run configuration as below:

   Run >> Edit Configurations >> + >> Maven
   
   Parameters tab ...
   Name :: Tomcat
   Working Directory :: Project Root Directory
   Command Line :: tomcat7:run
   
   Runner tab ...
   VM Options :: <user needed options>
   JRE :: <project needed>
   

3. Invoke Tomcat in Run/Debug mode directly from IntelliJ Run >> Run/Debug menu

NOTE: Though this is considered a hacking of using using Tomcat integration features of IntelliJ - Enterprise version features, but I would consider this a programmatic way integrating tomcat to the IntelliJ Idea - community edition.