Question

Is it possible to map URLs to servlets (maybe something specific with Tomcat) so that the two following URLs (with {id}’s being variables retrievable from code),

/users/{id}/a

/users/{id}/b

map to two different servlets, or will I have to implement some sort of filter of my own for a servlet mapped to /users/*?

To be more clear, any URL with the pattern /users/*/a should map to the same servlet. The same goes for /users/*/b.

Answer 1

You could map it on /users/* and extract information from HttpServletRequest#getPathInfo():

@WebServlet("/users/*")
public class UsersController extends HttpServlet {

    @Override
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        String[] pathInfo = request.getPathInfo().split("/");
        String id = pathInfo[1]; // {id}
        String command = pathInfo[2]; // a or b
        // ...
    }

}

(obvious validation on array size omitted)