CODEWITHSUNDEEP
jsf-2el
Antares42
Antares42

Reputation: 1436

How do I use #{request.contextPath} when the context root is, well, root: "/"?

We are currently moving an EE6 / JSF application from a deployment path someserver.com/app to its own subdomain app.someserver.com.

Most things are working smoothly, but we have had unexpected troubles with how the web layer handles the now basically nonexistent context-root.

One thing we found and fixed early was that a cookie we set had its path shortened from "/app" to "", and thus was only readable per folder on the server, not for the entire application.

We have now found a similar problem with hyperlinks that we generate in JSF:

<a href="#{request.contextPath}">Go to home page</a>

This was previously rendered as href="/app" and worked fine, but now with href="" the link is understandably no longer active. I want it to say href=""/".

Is there an elegant solution for that?

Keep in mind that we also have links of the form

<a href="#{request.contextPath}/projects">Go to projects page</a>

, so simply replacing the empty context path with "/" is not good enough.

Am I missing something obvious? I saw an explanation here (which matches what we experience), but no elaboration on possible solutions.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2807

Answers (1)

Antares42
Antares42

Reputation: 1436

Turns out I wasn't thinking clearly. I was so focused on fixing the string that #{request.contextPath} produces, that I missed that I basically used it wrong the entire time.

The simplest solution is to just use 

<a href="#{request.contextPath}/">...</a>

(with a trailing slash) to get to the root of the application, and never use href="#{request.contextPath}" without a slash at all.

This solves both cases. If the application is deployed to "some_folder", the link becomes "some_folder/". And if the application is deployed to the server root, then the link becomes "/".

Hope this helps someone who stumbled into the same trap.

Upvotes: 2

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