Filter mapping url-pattern that excludes subdirectories

Question

Is there any way to make a filtermapping not include subdirectories?

For example.

I have .xhtml files in my context root, and I also have a subfolder named \

Answer 1

The url-pattern is indeed restrictive in matching. It only allows exact, prefix or suffix matchnig. Not midst/overall/regex matching. So e.g. /*.xhtml what you intend to do ain't going to work.

If you want to exclude XHTML in the /test folder only, then your best is really a Filter listening on an url-pattern of *.xhtml which does basically the following job in doFilter() method:

// First cast ServletRequest to HttpServletRequest.
HttpServletRequest hsr = (HttpServletRequest) request;

// Check if requested resource is not in /test folder.
if (!hsr.getServletPath().startsWith("/test/")) {
    // Not in /test folder. Do your thing here.
}

The HttpServletRequest#getServletPath() basically returns the part of the request URI from the context path on.

You can if necessary configure the value /test as an of the filter so that you can control the value from inside the web.xml instead of in the Filter's code.