Can DropWizard serve assets from outside the jar file?

Question

In looking at the documentation, it appears that DropWizard is only able to serve static content living in src/main/resources. I'd like to keep my static files in a separate directory outside the jar file. Is that possible? Or do most people use nginx/Apache for their static content?

Answer 1

yes, it can, using this plugin - https://github.com/bazaarvoice/dropwizard-configurable-assets-bundle

Answer 2

Working off of Marcello Nuccio's answer, it still took me the better part of my day to get it right, so here is what I did in a bit more detail.

Let's say I have this directory structure:

• my-dropwizard-server.jar
• staticdocs
  • assets
    • image.png

Then this is what you have to do to make it work:

1) In your dropwizard Application class, add a new AssetsBundle. If you want your assets to be served from a different URL, change the second parameter.

@Override
public void initialize(Bootstrap<AppConfiguration> bootstrap) {
    bootstrap.addBundle(new AssetsBundle("/assets/", "/assets/"));       
}

2) Add the document root to your classpath by configuring the maven-jar-plugin like this. (Getting the "./staticdocs/" in the correct form took me a while. Classpaths are unforgiving.)

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.4</version>
  <configuration>
    <archive>
      <manifest>
        <addDefaultImplementationEntries>true</addDefaultImplementationEntries>
        <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
      </manifest>
      <manifestEntries>
        <Class-Path>./staticdocs/</Class-Path>
      </manifestEntries>
    </archive>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

3) This step is entirely optional. If you want to serve your Jersey REST Resources from a different root path (e.g. "app"), add the following to your configuration YML:

server:
  rootPath: /app/*

Now you can access your static content like this, for example:

localhost:8080/assets/image.png