spring mvc website on root (“/”)

Question

I want to map spring mvc controller to root (/**) path (and not sub-folder such as "/something") while making exceptions with mvc:resources (open to another method).

This should be the ABC of that framework but apparently is a very complicated stuff to ask of it.

My app-servlet.xml has these obvious mapping exceptions:

<mvc:resources mapping="/favicon.ico" location="/favicon.ico" />
<mvc:resources mapping="/robots.txt" location="/robots.txt" />

And I have this controller:

import java.util.Date;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/**")
public class MainController {

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String service(final HttpServletRequest request) {
        final String servlet_path = request.getServletPath();
        System.out.println(String.format("%s %s", new Date().toString(), servlet_path));
        return "test";
    }
}

Now when I hit "/" or "/test" or "/test/page" I get output like:

Fri Aug 03 00:22:12 IDT 2012 /
Fri Aug 03 00:22:13 IDT 2012 /favicon.ico

.. see? service() is being called for /favicon.ico even when it's explicitly excluded!

Now I guess there's some "priority" to the @Controller over the XML, still, how do I make the exclusion work?

A simple requirement - have the website on "/".

P.S This answer answers to a very similar question.

Another note: This question is not about tomcat context.

Answer 1

I'd like to clarify that instead of rewriting the <mvc:annotation-driven/> one can change the declaration order of the handler directives:

<mvc:resources mapping="/favicon.ico" location="/favicon.ico" order="0"/>
<mvc:resources mapping="/robots.txt" location="/robots.txt" order="0"/>
<mvc:annotation-driven/>

Answer 2

The issue here is that the underlying HandlerMapping registered with <mvc:resources has a very low priority compared to the one registered with <mvc:annotation-driven/>. If you requirement is to simply have something respond to "/" a better way probably will be to have a different @RequestMapping than /** instead say have it as /home and define something along these lines:

<mvc:view-controller path="/" view-name="home" />

If this will not work, the only other option will be to lower the priority of underlying handlerMapping of <mvc:resources, which can be done by explicitly defining the HandlerMapping - a little complicated but can be done.

Updated Here is a possible configuration:

Try with just this first:

<mvc:resources mapping="/favicon.ico" location="/favicon.ico" order="0"/>
<mvc:resources mapping="/robots.txt" location="/robots.txt" order="0"/>

If this alone does not work, change <mvc:annotation-driven/> to something along these lines for Spring 3.1.x:

<bean name="handlerAdapter" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter">
    <property name="webBindingInitializer">
        <bean class="org.springframework.web.bind.support.ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer">
            <property name="conversionService" ref="conversionService"></property>
            <property name="validator">
                <bean class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean">
                    <property name="providerClass" value="org.hibernate.validator.HibernateValidator"></property>
                </bean>
            </property>
        </bean>
    </property>
    <property name="messageConverters">
        <list>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.ResourceHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.xml.SourceHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.xml.XmlAwareFormHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.xml.Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter"></bean>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean name="handlerMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerMapping">
    <property name="order" value="2"></property>
</bean>