spring servlet url-pattern map not working with star sign

Question

In the web.xml if I specified the servlet map with a full path like this:

<servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/view/admin</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

It works fine, but if I using a star sign(*) according to the specification (chapter 12.2):

In the Web application deployment descriptor, the following syntax is used to define mappings:

• A string beginning with a ‘ / ’ character and ending with a ‘ /* ’ suffix is used for path mapping.
• A string beginning with a ‘ *. ’ prefix is used as an extension mapping. The empty string ("") is a special URL pattern that exactly maps to the application's context root, i.e., requests of the form http://host:port//. In this case the path info is ’ / ’ and the servlet path and context path is empty string (““).
• A string containing only the ’ / ’ character indicates the "default" servlet of the application. In this case the servlet path is the request URI minus the context path and the path info is null.
• All other strings are used for exact matches only.

Like this:

<servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/view/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

The map rule just not work, and glassfish gives a log like:

[glassfish 4.0] [WARNING] [] [org.springframework.web.servlet.PageNotFound] [tid: _ThreadID=19 _ThreadName=http-listener-1(2)] [timeMillis: 1422503740955] [levelValue: 900] [[No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/view/admin] in DispatcherServlet with name 'spring']]

What should be wrong?(I have found what cause this, please read on)

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Additional info on Spring MVC configure and the Controller Class

Following is some more additional information that required by comments.

The full web.xml is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app>
       <servlet>
              <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
              <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
              <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
       </servlet>

       <servlet-mapping>
              <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
              <url-pattern>/view/*</url-pattern>
       </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

And here is the spring-servlet.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.1.xsd ">

       <mvc:annotation-driven></mvc:annotation-driven>

       <context:component-scan base-package="com.ksider.service.searchserver.controller"></context:component-scan>


       <bean id="freemarkerSettings" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerConfigurer">
              <property name="templateLoaderPath" value="/WEB-INF/view/" />
              <property name="freemarkerSettings">
                     <props>

                            <prop key="template_update_delay">0</prop>
                            <prop key="default_encoding">UTF-8</prop>
                            <prop key="locale">zh_CN</prop>
                            <prop key="url_escaping_charset">UTF-8</prop>
                            <prop key="whitespace_stripping">true</prop>
                            <prop key="date_format">yyyy-MM-dd</prop>
                            <prop key="datetime_format">yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss</prop>
                            <prop key="number_format">0.##</prop>
                            <prop key="classic_compatible">true</prop>
                     </props>
              </property>
              <property name="freemarkerVariables">
                     <map>
                            <entry key="xml_escape" value-ref="fmXmlEscape" />
                     </map>
              </property>
       </bean>

       <bean id="fmXmlEscape" class="freemarker.template.utility.XmlEscape"/>


       <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerViewResolver">
              <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerView"/>

              <!-- <property name="viewNames" value="*.ftl"/> -->
              <property name="contentType" value="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
              <property name="cache" value="true" />
              <property name="prefix" value="" />
              <property name="suffix" value=".ftl" />
              <property name="order" value="1"/>
              <property name="exposeSpringMacroHelpers" value="true"/>
              <property name="requestContextAttribute" value="rc"/>
       </bean>
</beans>

And this is the controller:

package com.ksider.service.searchserver.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.ModelMap;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

@Controller
public class AdminController {
    @RequestMapping(value = "/view/admin", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String getAdminPage(ModelMap modelMap){
        modelMap.put("Msg","hello");
        return "admin/index";
    }
}

---

Progress update:

I have fond what cause this, if I use

 <servlet-mapping>
         <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
         <url-pattern>/view/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>

instead of

 <servlet-mapping>
              <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
              <url-pattern>/view/admin</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>

Some how I should add a prefix /view to every request, like if I want to query http://localhost:8080/view/admin I should query http://localhost:8080/view/view/admin instead.

I think this is a very confusing issue :-(

I just check the servlet mapping reference and can't get a clue why this happened. Maybe some trick Spring mvc to blame?

So, the question became :

• What cause this? and what should I do to avoid adding a prefix to every query?

Answer 1

There are 2 different problems.

First is how the servlet container maps to a servlet. You have correctly interpreted that : if servlet is mapped to /view/admin or /view/* it will equally receive the request.

Next is how the request is decoded and processed by spring DispatcherServlet. Servlet specification 3.0 (3.5 Request Path Elements) says :

• when servlet is mapped to /view/admin servlet path is /view/admin and path info is null
• when servlet is mapped to /view/* servlet path is /view and path info id /admin

When DispatcherServlet finds a null path info, it looks for the servlet path in its mappings (and finds your controller), but if path info is not null, it assumes that servlet path is a prefix that is not in the mappings.

That's the reason why you find your controller under /view/view/admin : first /view is eaten by servlet path and path info /view/admin is the mapping for the controller.

When you map the DispatcherServlet to /view/*, the controller mappings must not contain the servlet path => you controller mapping should be /admin