Question

My main controller serves the public user. It has the following mappings:

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value="/") 
public class HomeController extends BaseController {

@RequestMapping("/") // handles www.somesite.com
public ModelAndView request(Model model) {

@RequestMapping("/{contentId}")  // handles www.somesite.com/sports
public ModelAndView requestWithContentId(@PathVariable String contentId, Model model) {

@RequestMapping("/{contentId}/**") // handles www.somesite.com/sports/hockey/nhl , etc
public ModelAndView requestWithContentId2(@PathVariable String contentId, Model model) {

I also have a set of admin controllers that map to paths matching /admin*. Here’s one example:

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value="/admin/article")
public class AdminArticleController extends BaseController

1. I find that my main controller mappings are of higher priority. Consequently, request for /admin/article is processed by the main controller and not by dedicated AdminArticleController. How can I fix this?

2. I also notice that requests for style sheet sitting in /static/default.css, also go through the main controller. Is there a way to avoid this?

Answer 1

Change your URL scheme. Starting your URLs with a variable in Spring MVC is pretty bad, for the reason you have just demonstrated.

Either change your content-links to something like /content/{contentId} or create explicit mappings for all content, i.e. /sports, /whatever…

As a last resort, if you absolutely can’t change how your URL scheme looks to your users, use something like Tuckey urlrewrite and do a re-write:

/xyz -> /content/xyz

EXCEPT for “known” context like “admin” or “static”.