How to serve static resources from a Vaadin/Spring application?

Question

I have Vaadin web application with spring security integration for authentication. The configuration of the Vaadin servlet is pretty simple:

<servlet>

    <servlet-name>Vaadin Application Servlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.example.SpringApplicationServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>applicationBean</param-name>
        <param-value>mainApplication</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>widgetset</param-name>
        <param-value>com.example.widgetset.CustomWidgetSet</param-value>
    </init-param>

</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Vaadin Application Servlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

The servlet initializes the Spring Context and returns the Vaadin application. I have also configured the security for that and have a custom login form configured like this:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>login</servlet-name>
    <jsp-file>/jsp/login.jsp</jsp-file>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>login</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/login</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>


<servlet>
    <servlet-name>login_error</servlet-name>
    <jsp-file>/jsp/loginError.jsp</jsp-file>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>login_error</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/login_error</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

The login form is styled with an external css and there are also some images. Basically the images are located in /jsp/img and the stylesheet in /jsp/login.css. So the WAR structure looks like:

• /jsp
• /META-INF
• /VAADIN
• /WEB-INF

Neither the images nor the css gets loaded, because obviously all those requests are mapped to the vaadin servlet. How can I define some static resources directory, which wouldn't be served by the Vaadin servlet? I have tried the spring mvc:resources but that didn't work. Thank you for your help.

Bye, Filip

I have figured this out. Although it is rather a workaround. I have mapped the Vaadin Application Servlet to something like /app/* instead of to /* (Remember that in this case you also have to map the same servlet to /VAADIN/*). With this configuration I am able to access the jsp directory from my webapp and everything works fine. I have deleted the whole Spring Resources configuration, as this just didn't work.

So once more, I am still pretty not pretty comfortable with this solution and would rather have my RESOURCES dir configured other way, but the client is happy :). If anyone has got the right solution I would appreciate to read it.

Answer 1

Use a url rewrite filter to get more contro on url mapping.

<filter>
    <filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriteFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

then map Vaadin application to /vaadin for example and configure url maping in urlrewrite.xml

 <rule>
    <from>/styles/**</from>
    <to last="true">/styles/$1</to>
 </rule>
 <rule>
    <from>/images/**</from>
     <to last="true">/images/$1</to>
 </rule>
 <rule>
    <from>/**</from>
    <to>/vaadin/$1</to>
 </rule>
 <outbound-rule>
    <from>/vaadin/**</from>
     <to>/$1</to>
 </outbound-rule>   

EDIT Other option is put static files in /VAADIN/ directory.

Answer 2

I have figured this out. Although it is rather a workaround. I have mapped the Vaadin Application Servlet to something like /app/* instead of to /* (Remember that in this case you also have to map the same servlet to /VAADIN/*). With this configuration I am able to access the jsp directory from my webapp and everything works fine. I have deleted the whole Spring Resources configuration, as this just didn't work.

So once more, I am still pretty not pretty comfortable with this solution and would rather have my RESOURCES dir configured other way, but the c

Answer 3

Might be late but for who is still having problems with serving static content while using vaadin /* mapping, the solution I found was using apache's default servlet org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet, so a web.xml will have something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app
  id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0" 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/javaee
  http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>myservlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.vaadin.server.VaadinServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>UI</param-name>
      <param-value>com.ex.myprj.MyUI</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <!-- If not using the default widget set-->
    <init-param>
      <param-name>widgetset</param-name>
      <param-value>com.ex.myprj.AppWidgetSet</param-value>
    </init-param>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>myservlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>Static content Servlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>debug</param-name>
      <param-value>0</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>listings</param-name>
      <param-value>false</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Static content Servlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/customer/*</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

So in the example above, despite having vaadin at /*, the /customer/* part will be served as static content by the DefaultServlet