CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaservlets
ForeignerBR
ForeignerBR

Reputation: 2469

Access resources (CSS, HTML, images, JS) through servlet

I'd like to know if anyone has a solution to access resources of a website through a servlet only. I have all my resources under WEB-INF. In other words, I don't want users to have direct access to any of my resources.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4795

Answers (2)

BalusC
BalusC

Reputation: 1108712

You can use ServletContext#getResource() for that.

URL resource = getServletContext().getResource("/WEB-INF/file.ext");
File file = new File(resource.getPath());
// ...

You can even use ServletContext#getResourceAsStream() to get an InputStream directly:

InputStream input = getServletContext().getResourceAsStream("/WEB-INF/file.ext");
// ...

As you can see in the examples, the ServletContext is available in servlets by the inherited GenericServlet#getServletContext() method.

That said, the phrase I don't want users to have direct access to any of my resources. is a bit contradicting. You're serving those resources by a servlet anyway? A servlet is directly accessible by URL. How is that different from "direct access"? Or do you just want to control the access based on some conditions? I'd say, a Filter is more suitable for this task.

Usually one would only fully hide the JSP files from direct access. In a Servlet which acts as front controller (according the MVC pattern) you could then forward requests to JSP files using RequestDispatcher#forward() which you in turn can obtain by ServletRequest#getRequestDispatcher().

request.getRequestDispatcher("/WEB-INF/page.jsp").forward(request, response);

Upvotes: 6

Nikita Rybak
Nikita Rybak

Reputation: 68006

You can hide jsp from the end user. In fact, you don't even have to deploy original jsp files with your web application, you can precompile them:
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/jasper-howto.html#Web%20Application%20Compilation

And the only way to hide html/js/css files is not to use them. Anything that's sent to the browser can be viewed there.

Upvotes: 0

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