How do I configure spring controller URLs to not have an extension? - spring

Question

My controllers are currently mapped to be something like http://example.com/fix.go and, of course, I think that's idiotic and want something nicer like http://example.com/fix or http://example.com/mmm/fix with no extension. When I try to configure this, however, I can't get it to work. I'm clearly missing a key part of understanding on the entire mapping. I'm using Spring 3.x, tomcat, and annotations for the controllers.
My web.xml is as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app
version="2.4"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
<servlet>
<servlet-name>BooBoo</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>BooBoo</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.*</url-pattern> <!-- was *.go when it worked -->
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>
</web-app>
BooBoo-servlet.xml is:
<?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"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
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="com.foofoo.booboo"/>
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
</beans>
And one of my controllers is configured as such:
#Controller
public class BangBangController extends BaseController {
// Used to be fix.go when it worked
#RequestMapping( value="fix", method=RequestMethod.GET )
public ModelAndView choose(
HttpSession session,
#RequestParam( value="fixId", required=false, defaultValue="-1" ) Integer fixId,
#RequestParam( value="forkId", required=false, defaultValue="-1" ) Integer forkId
)
throws Exception { ... }
}
I've tried changing the mapping in web.xml to /mmm/* expecting URLs like http://example.com/mmm/fix to work, but that too has not worked. I get "missing resource" errors when I enter what I think are the correct URLs in the browser.
What am I goofing up here? What critical piece of understanding do I lack? I've tried making the no extension thing work on another project at work, and couldn't get it to go there either. I'm obviously missing something.

Answer 1

The problem is your dispatcher servlet is matching anything with a "." in it.
Change it to
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
However, that's also bad as you won't be able to serve static content.
What you really should do is this:
<url-pattern>/webapp/*</url-pattern>
Where "webapp" is some prefix. All of your URLs will need to be prefixed with it, but that allows you to still serve static content.

Answer 2

The answer was that I flubbed up the spring-servlet.xml file by not specifying that I was using the Spring MVC stuff. I appreciate Chris' help in diagnosing the issue. I needed confirmation that some of the things I tried (but failed because of this mistake) were correct.
I added
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
and
<mvc:annotation-driven />
to that file, and boom, it started working. What leaves me scratching my head is, "How did it work without that?" Cuz it worked for *.go patterns.
Here's the resulting file in full:
<?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"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
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="com.barbar.foofoo"/>
<!-- Enables the Spring MVC #Controller programming model -->
<mvc:annotation-driven />
<!--
Declare View Resolver: when view 'view_name' is called (from the Controller),
the file '/jsp/view_name.jsp' will be used.
-->
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/jsp/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
</beans>