Question

I want some concrete filter to be applied for all urls except for one concrete (i.e. for /* except for /specialpath).

Is there a possibility to do that?

---

sample code:

<filter>
    <filter-name>SomeFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.somproject.AFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>SomeFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>   <!-- the question is: how to modify this line?  -->
    <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
    <dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>

Answer 1

The standard Servlet API doesn’t support this facility. You may want either to use a rewrite-URL filter for this like Tuckey’s one (which is much similar Apache HTTPD’s mod_rewrite), or to add a check in the doFilter() method of the Filter listening on /*.

String path = ((HttpServletRequest) request).getRequestURI();
if (path.startsWith("/specialpath/")) {
    chain.doFilter(request, response); // Just continue chain.
} else {
    // Do your business stuff here for all paths other than /specialpath.
}

You can if necessary specify the paths-to-be-ignored as an init-param of the filter so that you can control it in the web.xml anyway. You can get it in the filter as follows:

private String pathToBeIgnored;

public void init(FilterConfig config) {
    pathToBeIgnored = config.getInitParameter("pathToBeIgnored");
}

If the filter is part of 3rd party API and thus you can’t modify it, then map it on a more specific url-pattern, e.g. /otherfilterpath/* and create a new filter on /* which forwards to the path matching the 3rd party filter.

String path = ((HttpServletRequest) request).getRequestURI();
if (path.startsWith("/specialpath/")) {
    chain.doFilter(request, response); // Just continue chain.
} else {
    request.getRequestDispatcher("/otherfilterpath" + path).forward(request, response);
}

To avoid that this filter will call itself in an infinite loop you need to let it listen (dispatch) on REQUEST only and the 3rd party filter on FORWARD only.

See also:

• How to prevent static resources from being handled by front controller servlet which is mapped on /*
• How to handle static content in Spring MVC?