Role of filter-mapping

Question

I'm trying out Spring and I've met the filter-mapping tag. What is its role when compared to the servlet-mapping tag? Is it executed in the background when the urls are called?

Answer 1

<filter-mapping> specifies when a javax.servlet.Filter is invoked.

Filters are invoked before the servlet they are defined for (you can map a filter to either an URL pattern or to a specific servlet)