Question

If I map my spring application to process all incoming requests (‘/*’), then requests for static content return 404’s. For example, a request for “myhost.com/css/global.css” would return a 404, even though the resource exists as Spring intercepts the request.

The alternative is to map SpringMVC to a subdirectory (for example ‘/home/‘), but in this case, you must pass this directory in all links within the application. Is there a way to map SpringMVC to ‘/‘ and exclude a set of directories from processing?

My current web.xml configuration is:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>springApp</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>springApp</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/home/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Idealy I would like to have the mapping be something like the following:

 <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>springApp</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    <exclude>/css/*,/js/*</exclude>
 </servlet-mapping>

Is this type of thing possible?

Answer 1

If you want to do this with Spring only, it’s possible but a bit messy:

1. You’ll either need to use a SimpleUrlHandlerMapping for which you can explicitly specify URL patterns which should be mapped to controllers OR extend it to support “ignore” URLs like “css/**”.
2. You’ll need to write your own HttpRequestHandler implementation that would basically consist of “getServletContext().getRequestDsipatcher().include()” call to return the requested resource as is.
3. You’ll have to register that handler as defaultHandler for the above SimpleUrlHandlerMapping.

Once all that is done, all requests that can’t be mapped to your controllers will be forwarded to your HttpRequestHandler and served “as is”.