CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jspspring-mvc
Miten
Miten

Reputation: 358

spring mvc and jsp pages location under webapp vs WEB-INF

I have question on spring mvc and jsp pages location under webapp vs under WEB-INF.

Lets say we have below setup.

webapp
  WEB-INF
    mvc-dispatcher.xml
    web.xml
  login.jsp
  register.jsp
  success.jsp
  error.jsp
  index.jsp

I can refer to pages from browser using urls like http://host.com/app/index.jsp and from there I can link (a href) to register.jsp. From register.jsp I post to controller which can return success view that resolves to success.jsp (using InternalResourceViewResolver).

If I move jsp pages under WEB-INF (instead of earlier under webapp) I will be unable to refer http://host.com/app/index.jsp from browser. Also from success.jsp currently I link to index.jsp using a href="index.jsp" which will need to change to map to controller (may be at / like the dispatcher servlet) that would return index as view name. So all my links will need to be served by controller. am I right ? or is there a way to refer to jsp pages without any mapped controller when jsp pages are located under WEB-INF (given InternalResourceViewResolver is configured).

Regards,

Miten.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 7606

Answers (1)

madhead
madhead

Reputation: 33412

You are absolutely right. You cannot refer to JSPs inside WEB-INF directly from browser. And this is very good. All you requests should be forwarded to JSP via controller, and all your JSP should be under WEB-INF. There are many reasons to do so:

  • Users cannot get actual source of you JSPs, and it positively impacts on security.
  • Many JSPs rely on some request attributes to exist (The Model). When user calls JSPs directly from browser, the Model is not present. This may break some logic.
  • One JSP under WEB-INF may be used to serve different URLs without any changes, and users will know nothing about it!
  • It's just a good practice, when you do MVC (Model 2, not Model 1)

Considering you question about direct referring to JSPs without Controller:

  • You can directly map HTTP exceptions / Throwables to JSPs via JSP error pages. A simple technique is good for custom 404, for example.
  • When using Apache Tiles + Spring and accessing some /notmappedurl Spring (Tiles) will try to find notmappedurl template definition. (From my experience with Tiles + Spring). I think other view technologies have similar behavior.
  • It is not very difficult to write: @RequestMapping("/someurl")void someurl(){}. Spring will try to find someurl view, based on method name. Just a stub.

Upvotes: 6

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