Configure Spring Framework 5.3+, Spring Boot 2.3+ Routing for SPA frontend

Question

I have a simple frontend application made using Angular. All routings are handled by Angular so I want Spring boot to forward all page traffics to "/" so angular routing can handle them.

There are already some known answers in stackoverflow. They are:

• spring-boot-single-page-application-routing-on-any-url
• configure-spring-boot-for-spa-frontend
• spring-boot-with-redirecting-with-single-page-angular2

But none of them work anymore because from Spring Framework 5.3 and onwards AntPathMatcher has been replaced with PathPattern. PathPattern is compatible with AntPathMatcher syntax except for the following:

Support for "**" for multi-segment matching is only allowed at the end of a pattern. This helps to eliminate most causes of ambiguity when choosing the closest match for a given request.

So this won't work anymore:

  // Match everything without a suffix (so not a static resource)
  @RequestMapping(value = "/**/{path:[^.]*}")
  public String redirectAngularRoutes() {
    return "forward:/";
  }

So what is the best approach now starting with Spring Framework 5.3?

Do we specify each angular routing and forward them to "/" like below or there are other alternatives?

  @RequestMapping({ "/help/**","/view/**","/admin/**" })
  public String redirectAngularRoutes() {
    return "forward:/";
  }

Answer 1

You can configure the path matching strategy to use the ant path matcher in your application.yml

spring:
  mvc:
    pathmatch:
      matching-strategy: ant_path_matcher

There is currently no deprecation warning on the Ant Path Matcher but it seems possible it could be removed in the future.