Question

I have a basic directory app that works fine except that it seems to only sometimes find the static resources that I’ve configured using the mvc:resources tag. My search of the board found problems related to handler mappings, but my problem seems to be different.

Specifically, when the PersonController is called via a method mapping to “/person”, it returns personlist.jsp using the view resolver and correctly finds and uses the static css and js files. No problems.

When the same controller is called via another method mapping to “/person/{familyid}” ( narrows the person list to a particular family), it returns the same personlist.jsp…but now it fails to find or use the css and js files (though it does display the correct data).

I don’t understand why there is a behavior difference since both scenarios use the same Controller, the same return String (return “personlist”), and resolve to the same JSP (ie. with the same Head section links for the css, js).

I looked at what came back in the browser for each case using ‘view source’, and both pages return the same head tag rendering for the css and js linking:

<link href="resources/css/directory.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></link>
<script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/jquery-1.7.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/directory.js"></script>

I thought the problem could be with my tag mapping, so I also tried this:

 <resources mapping="**/resources/**" and
 resources mapping="resources/**" 

but no help.

Am I approaching the use of static resources properly here (and what is the right resources tag mapping if that’s the problem)? Thanks.

I am using Spring 3.0.6 and my css and js files are located under /WebContent/resources/css and /WebContent/resources/scripts respectively, which are mapped using the mvc:resource tag (see below).

PersonController:

@Controller
public class PersonController {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(HomeController.class);

    /**
     * Simply selects the home view to render by returning its name.
     */

    List<Person> personList;
    Boolean familyCalled = false;

    @Autowired
    PersonService personService;

    @RequestMapping(value="/people", method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public String people(Model model) {

        logger.debug("Received request to show peoplelist page");

        System.out.println("Running inside people() method of PersonController");
        personList = personService.getPersons();
        familyCalled = false;
        model.addAttribute("personList", personList);
        return "personlist";
        }

    @RequestMapping(value="/people/{familyId}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public String familyMembers(@PathVariable("familyId") String fid, Model model) {
        System.out.println("Running inside familyMembers() method of PersonController");
        personList = personService.getPersonsInFamily(fid);
        familyCalled = true;
        model.addAttribute("personList", personList);
        return "personlist";
        }

Servlet-Context.xml (without namespaces):

<!-- DispatcherServlet Context: defines this servlet's request-processing infrastructure -->

    <!-- for transactions -->
    <tx:annotation-driven/>

    <!-- Needed for @PreAuthorize security on methods -->
    <aop:aspectj-autoproxy/>

    <context:annotation-config />

    <!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /resources/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/resources directory -->
    <resources mapping="/resources/**" location="resources/" />

        <!-- Enables the Spring MVC @Controller programming model -->
    <annotation-driven/>

    <!-- Resolves views selected for rendering by @Controllers to .jsp resources in the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
    <beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
        <beans:property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </beans:bean>

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.c3works.preps" />

</beans:beans>

personlist.jsp (Head section):

<head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</meta>
        <title>XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</title>

        <link href="resources/css/directory.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</link>

        <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/jquery-1.7.min.js">
</script>

        <script type="text/javascript" src="resources/scripts/directory.js">
</script>

    </head>

Answer 1

Your URLs are relative and therefore the browser is looking for the resources in the wrong place. (Check the resulting HTML code)

One solution is to use the <spring:url> tag to build the urls of the resources.

<spring:url var="banner" value="/resources/images/banner-graphic.png" />

<img src="${banner}" />