Why dispathcer-servlet.xml can't process p:suffix=".html"?

[Mike Cheung]

Hi, I'm stuck in understanding why my web container keeps displaying the following on the web browser if I simply change the servlet to return pages appending a suffix ".html" instead of ".jsp" which works to begin with.

HTTP Status 404 - Not Found
type Status report
messageNot Found
descriptionThe requested resource is not available.

Here're the relevant sections of my project. The only change that I need to make this work is to change dispatcher-servlet.xml to use p:suffix=".jsp" /> instead of p:suffix=".html" />. In my WEB-INF/jsp folder, I have both index.jsp and index.html. So any idea why it wouldn't work if I ask the viewResolver bean to return html pages?

web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app version="3.1" xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd"> <context-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value> </context-param> <listener> <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class> </listener> <servlet> <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class> <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name> <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> <session-config> <session-timeout> 30 </session-timeout> </session-config> <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> </web-app>

dispatcher-servlet.xml
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> <!-- was: <?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:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-4.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-4.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd"> <context:component-scan base-package="com.test.controller"/> <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver" p:prefix="/WEB-INF/jsp/" p:suffix=".html" /> </beans>

ProjectController.java

@Controller
public class DefaultController {

    @RequestMapping("/index.html")
    public String home(Model model) {
        return "index";
    }
}

[Prasad Krishnegowda]

You are mapping *.html to dispatcherservlet in web.xml, so when you change the suffix to .html, it goes and search for the corresponding mapping controller, which is not found.
Map *.htm to your dispatcherservlet in web.xml and you can change the suffix to .jsp or .html, then it should work.

[Mike Cheung]

Hi thanks for the reply. Did you mean to say when the controller returns the view page say contacts, the servlet appends .html so it becomes index.html. But because according to web.xml, it needs to intercept all requests with the .html suffix so this returned page (ie index.html) got intercepted again. As such the controller don't know how to handle this loop and therefore spitted out 404.

You suggested to configure web.xml with .htm instead of.html but wouldn't this makes it unable to handle a request with .html suffix?

If what I'm looking for is a way for users to make a request of index.html, and have the controller to return index.html, what is the appropriate way to do this?

[Mike Cheung]

Hi, I found the solution. Turns out I need to do the following.
1) Add the following to dispatcher-servlet.xml and leave the suffix to keep referencing .jsp so the Controller can still return JSP pages if required.
<mvc:resources mapping="/html/**" location="/WEB-INF/html/" /> <mvc:annotation-driven/>

In the end, the file looks like this.
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> <!-- was: <?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:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-4.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-4.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-4.0.xsd"> <context:component-scan base-package="com.test.controller"/> <!-- Most controllers will use the ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping above, but for the index controller we are using ParameterizableViewController, so we must define an explicit mapping for it. --> <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver" p:prefix="/WEB-INF/jsp/" p:suffix=".jsp" /> <mvc:resources mapping="/html/**" location="/WEB-INF/html/" /> <mvc:annotation-driven/> </beans>

2) Use the following return in the Controller's method.

return "forward:/html/index.html";

3) The web.xml file doesn't need to intercept specifically for any URL ending with .html so it looks like this.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app version="3.1" xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd"> <context-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value> </context-param> <listener> <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class> </listener> <servlet> <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class> <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> <session-config> <session-timeout> 30 </session-timeout> </session-config> <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file>index</welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> </web-app>

If anyone knows of another more appropriate way for doing this, please voice out.

[Prasad Krishnegowda]

Mike Cheung wrote:Did you mean to say when the controller returns the view page say contacts, the servlet appends .html so it becomes index.html. But because according to web.xml, it needs to intercept all requests with the .html suffix so this returned page (ie index.html) got intercepted again. As such the controller don't know how to handle this loop and therefore spitted out 404.

Yes. correct, but its not the servlet that appends .html, its the viewResolver you have configured that suffixes the .html and also prefixes /WEB-INF/jsp.

Mike Cheung wrote:You suggested to configure web.xml with .htm instead of.html but wouldn't this makes it unable to handle a request with .html suffix?

Here all the request ending with *.htm will go through the controller and give the requested html. In case you need to serve .html request directly, it would still serve, but not through the controller.