What's the difference between getRequestURI and getPathInfo methods in HttpServletRequest?

Question

I\'m making a simple, very lightweight front-controller. I need to match request paths to different handlers (actions) in order to choose the correct one.

On my loca

Answer 1

Let's break down the full URL that a client would type into their address bar to reach your servlet:

http://www.example.com:80/awesome-application/path/to/servlet/path/info?a=1&b=2#boo

The parts are:

1. scheme: http
2. hostname: www.example.com
3. port: 80
4. context path: awesome-application
5. servlet path: path/to/servlet
6. path info: path/info
7. query: a=1&b=2
8. fragment: boo

The request URI (returned by getRequestURI) corresponds to parts 4, 5 and 6.

(incidentally, even though you're not asking for this, the method getRequestURL would give you parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6).

Now:

• part 4 (the context path) is used to select your particular application out of many other applications that may be running in the server
• part 5 (the servlet path) is used to select a particular servlet out of many other servlets that may be bundled in your application's WAR
• part 6 (the path info) is interpreted by your servlet's logic (e.g. it may point to some resource controlled by your servlet).
• part 7 (the query) is also made available to your servlet using getQueryString
• part 8 (the fragment) is not even sent to the server and is relevant and known only to the client

The following always holds (except for URL encoding differences):

requestURI = contextPath + servletPath + pathInfo

The following example from the Servlet 3.0 specification is very helpful:

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Note: image follows, I don't have the time to recreate in HTML: