How to access static resources when mapping a glob

Question

I've mapped the Spring MVC dispatcher as a global front controller servlet on /*.

<servlet>       
  <servlet-name>home</servlet-name>         
  <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>     
</servlet>  
<servlet-mapping>       
  <servlet-name>home</servlet-name>         
  <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>     
</servlet-mapping>

However, this mapping stops the access to static files like CSS, JS, images etc which are all in the /res/ folder.

How can I access them anyway?

Answer 1

'Static' files in App Engine aren't directly accessible by your app. You either need to upload them twice, or serve the static files yourself, rather than using a static handler.

Answer 2

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">
<mvc:default-servlet-handler/>
</beans>

and if you want to use annotation based configuration use below code

@Override
    public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {
        configurer.enable();
    }

Answer 3

With Spring 3.0.4.RELEASE and higher you can use

<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/public-resources/"/>

As seen in Spring Reference.

Answer 4

I'd recommend trying to use a Filter instead of a default servlet whenever possible.

Other two possibilities:

Write a FileServlet yourself. You'll find plenty examples, it should just open the file by URL and write its contents into output stream. Then, use it to serve static file request.

Instantiate a FileServlet class used by Google App Engine and call service(request, response) on that FileServlet when you need to serve the static file at a given URL.

You can map /res/* to YourFileServlet or whatever to exclude it from DispatcherServlets' handling, or call it directly from DispatcherServlet.

And, I have to ask, what does Spring documentation say about this collision? I've never used it.

Answer 5

Map the controller servlet on a more specific url-pattern like /pages/*, put the static content in a specific folder like /static and create a Filter listening on /* which transparently continues the chain for any static content and dispatches requests to the controller servlet for other content.

In a nutshell:

<filter>
    <filter-name>filter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>com.example.Filter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>controller</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.example.Controller</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>controller</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/pages/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

with the following in filter's doFilter():

HttpServletRequest req = (HttpServletRequest) request;
String path = req.getRequestURI().substring(req.getContextPath().length());

if (path.startsWith("/static")) {
    chain.doFilter(request, response); // Goes to default servlet.
} else {
    request.getRequestDispatcher("/pages" + path).forward(request, response);
}

No, this does not end up with /pages in browser address bar. It's fully transparent. You can if necessary make "/static" and/or "/pages" an init-param of the filter.

Answer 6

The reason for the collision seems to be because, by default, the context root, "/", is to be handled by org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet. This servlet is intended to handle requests for static resources.

If you decide to bump it out of the way with your own servlet, with the intent of handling dynamic requests, that top-level servlet must also carry out any tasks accomplished by catalina's original "DefaultServlet" handler.

If you read through the tomcat docs, they make mention that True Apache (httpd) is better than Apache Tomcat for handling static content, since it is purpose built to do just that. My guess is because Tomcat by default uses org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet to handle static requests. Since it's all wrapped up in a JVM, and Tomcat is intended to as a Servlet/JSP container, they probably didn't write that class as a super-optimized static content handler. It's there. It gets the job done. Good enough.

But that's the thing that handles static content and it lives at "/". So if you put anything else there, and that thing doesn't handle static requests, WHOOPS, there goes your static resources.

I've been searching high and low for the same answer and the answer I'm getting everywhere is "if you don't want it to do that, don't do that".

So long story short, your configuration is displacing the default static resource handler with something that isn't a static resource handler at all. You'll need to try a different configuration to get the results you're looking for (as will I).