PATCH method in tomcat with Spring MVC

Question

I'm using spring 3.2.4 and I read that Spring MVC 3.2.X explicitly supports the PATCH HTTP method :

https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-7985

http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.2.0.RC1/reference/html/new-in-3.2.html

However, when I deploy my app in Tomcat (7.0.41) I systematically get a 501 error when using the PATCH method.

Why this doesn't work ? Is there a way to make it work ? Should I use another container instead of Tomcat ?

EDIT:

Here is my web.xml:

<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" version="3.0">

<welcome-file-list>
  <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

<context-param>
  <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
  <param-value>org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext</param-value>
</context-param>

<filter>
  <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
  <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
  <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
  <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

And my dependencies:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-jdbc</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-tx</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-data-commons</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-security-core</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-security-config</artifactId>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

Thanks in advance,

Jerome

Answer 1

OK, I finally found the solution: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.2.5.RELEASE/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/#mvc-ann-form-urlencoded-data

To support HTTP PUT and PATCH requests, the spring-web module provides the filter HttpPutFormContentFilter, which can be configured in web.xml:

<filter>
   <filter-name>httpPutFormFilter</filter-name>
   <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.HttpPutFormContentFilter</filter-class>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
   <filter-name>httpPutFormFilter</filter-name>
   <servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>

<servlet>
   <servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>

Answer 2

  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat-servlet-api</artifactId>
    <version>7.0.30</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

You can solve a problem by add tomcat-servlet-api version upgrade.