RequestMapping with more than one path element - spring

Question

I'm trying to write the simplest possible Spring application which uses more than one path element in a #RequestMapping. For example, /appcontext/blog/hello-world.html should work in the request mapping (obviously /appcontext is my application's context).
Can Spring do something like that? I have it working easily when it maps just one thing. For example:
#RequestMapping("hello-world")
works and will match /hello-world.do , /anything/hello-world.do , but my problem is, I'm trying to match only hello-world if it's in a /blog path, and whenever I use something like:
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello-world")
it doesn't ever trigger.
Server log for example:
INFO: Mapped "{[/blog/hello],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo()
That looks like it should work (and it's the only request mapping I have), but then:
WARNING: No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/context/blog/hello.html] in DispatcherServlet with name 'dispatcher'
Can Spring do something like this? I don't want to put all my request mappings in /, because it's going to be a mess.
The only mapping I have gotten to work is:
#RequestMapping("/**")
From there, I could look at the HttpServletRequest object directly, but that seems to defeat the entire point of having #RequestMapping.
Here is my Controller:
#Controller
public class BlogController {
private static final Logger LOG = Logger.getLogger(BlogController.class.getName());
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello")
public String foo1() {
LOG.info("foo1");
return "nothing";
}
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello.html")
public String foo2() {
LOG.info("foo2");
return "nothing";
}
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello.*")
public String foo3() {
LOG.info("foo3");
return "nothing";
}
#RequestMapping("/blog/**")
public String foo4() {
LOG.info("foo4");
return "nothing";
}
#RequestMapping("/blog/{path}")
public String foo5(#PathVariable String path) {
LOG.info("foo5 " + path);
return "nothing";
}
// added this as a test - it's the only way that this controller works
#RequestMapping("/**")
public String foo6() {
LOG.info("foo6");
return "nothing";
}
}
If I don't have the foo6 mapping, nothing in this works at all, no matter what URLs I go to.
When I use that controller, this is what shows up in the server log:
INFO: Mapped "{[/blog/hello],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo1()
INFO: Mapped "{[/blog/hello.html],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo2()
INFO: Mapped "{[/blog/hello.*],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo3()
INFO: Mapped "{[/blog/**],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo4()
INFO: Mapped "{[/blog/{path}],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo5(java.lang.String)
INFO: Mapped "{[/**],methods=[],params=[],headers=[],consumes=[],produces=[],custom=[]}" onto public java.lang.String mainweb.BlogController.foo6()
But again, nothing ever triggers except foo6 if I put it in.
Thank you!
Edit: I have created an extremely simple project, which has only one class, the Controller, with one method, the RequestMapping. This project does nothing except not work. There is simply no way to get #RequestMapping to do anything other than work with a wildcard. This seems like a critical bug in Spring; all the documentations says that #RequestMapping does more than just map one wildcard.

Answer 1

It looks to me that the reason it's not mapping in the /blog path is that you're not using that path to access it.
According to the errors that you posted in the question above, you have defined/mapped:
/blog/hello
Whereas you are trying to access:
/context/blog/hello.html
i.e. You are prefixing the URI with "/context" and suffixing it with ".html". That's why it's not responding.
I would recommend trying to access the URI that you have mapped. However, you may also need to ensure that your application's root context is correct.
Note that by adding the ".html" suffix, you are not using the path that you defined. If you wish to use random suffixes such as that, then it is also possible to use wildrcards in your mappings. i.e. #RequestMapping(value = "/blog/hello**")
However, I would generally recommend against using wildcards if you can avoid it, as they are likely to throw up a few surprises when you add more mappings to your application.
Edit - I also just spotted that your controller is messing up those mappings even more. Just read the following mappings together:
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello")
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello.html")
#RequestMapping("/blog/hello.*")
Your mappings are clashing with each other. The first mapping in that list is a subset of the others, so it will be used for any URLs that match any of those mappings. i.e. The second 2 are redundant. You could potentially fix that by putting the 'bare' /blog/hello after the the other 2, so that the more specific mappings are picked up first, however, relying on the order in which the methods are written seems like asking for trouble to me.

Answer 2

Figured it out. The servlet-mapping chops off part of the path! The servlet-mapping basically creates a mini-context. I didn't know it did that, and it's not intuitively obvious, but that's what's happening.