Which XHTML files do I need to put in /WEB-INF and which not?

Question

After these questions:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8589315/jsf2-dynamic-template
• Dynamic ui:include
• How can I retrieve an object on @

Answer 1

Files in /WEB-INF folder are indeed not publicly accessible by enduser. So you cannot have something like http://localhost:8080/contextname/WEB-INF/some.xhtml. That would be a potential security hole as the enduser would be able to view among others /WEB-INF/web.xml and so on.

You can however use the /WEB-INF folder to put master template files, include files and tag files in. For example, the following template client page.xhtml which is placed outside /WEB-INF and is accessible by http://localhost:8080/contextname/page.xhtml:

    
        ...
        
        ...
    

The advantage of placing master templates and include files in /WEB-INF is that the enduser won't be able to open them directly by entering/guessing its URL in the browser addres bar. The normal pages and template clients which are intented to be accessed directly must not be placed in /WEB-INF folder.

By the way, the composite component files are in turn also not supposed to be publicly accessible, however they are by specification required to be placed in /resources folder which is by default publicly accesible. If you make sure that you access all resources using the therefor provided components so that they are never accessed by /resources in URL (but instead by /javax.faces.resource), then you can add the following constraint to web.xml to block all public access to the /resources folder:

    Restrict direct access to the /resources folder.
    
        The /resources folder.
        /resources/*