URL Mapping issue - Spring web MVC - spring

Question

I'm a newbie with Spring and web MVC module. Basically, i have the following :
web.xml
<servlet>
<servlet-name>abc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>abc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/user/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
abc-dispatcher-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"
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">
<context:component-scan base-package="myPkg" />
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/pages/"></property>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"></property>
</bean>
And i have a controller, related parts are :
#Controller
public class ABCController {
#RequestMapping("/user/welcome")
public String printWelcome(ModelMap model) {
//code
}
Now whenever i try to access http://localhost:8080/myapp/user/welcome
it gives me 404.
Logs say that "mapped url '/user/welcome' onto handler 'ABCController' but it failed to map URI [/MYAPP/user/welcome] in DispatcherServlet with name 'abc-dispatcher' .
Totally confused. I have checked all the threads where we specify a mapping twice, but that's not the case here. I must be missing something!
Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

The URL should be http://localhost:8080/myapp/user/user/welcome. Indeed, unless the alwaysUseFullPath property of the handler is set to true, the servlet-mapping is prepended to the request mapping URL to form the full path.
See http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.1.x/spring-framework-reference/htmlsingle/spring-framework-reference.html#mvc-handlermapping for details:
alwaysUseFullPath
If true , Spring uses the full path within the current Servlet context to find an appropriate handler. If false (the default), the
path within the current Servlet mapping is used. For example, if a
Servlet is mapped using /testing/* and the alwaysUseFullPath property
is set to true, /testing/viewPage.html is used, whereas if the
property is set to false, /viewPage.html is used.

Answer 2

It's' been added context:component-scan element into the sample context file snippet but there is no <annotation-driven/> element that says spring framework to look for controllers annotated with #Controller

Answer 3

For me, the problem was that I was using the deprecated DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping, and even if setting the alwaysUseFullPath to true, it didn't take effect, however replacing DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping in benefit of RequestMappingHandlerMapping with the alwaysUseFullPath set to true solved the problem.
<bean id="handlerMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerMapping">
<property name="alwaysUseFullPath" value="true"></property>
</bean>