A table of contents is produced with the \tableofcontents
command. You put the command right where you want the table of contents
to go; LaTeX does the rest for you. It produces a heading, but it does
not automatically start a new page. If you want a new page after the
table of contents, include a \newpage command after the
\tableofcontents command.
There are similar commands \listoffigures and
\listoftables for producing a list of figures and a list of
tables, respectively. Everything works exactly the same as for the
table of contents.
NOTE: If you want any of these items to be generated, you cannot
have the \nofiles command in your document.