Dispatcher servlet spring and url pattern

Question

I'm new to spring framework I today I ran into dispatcher servlet configuration in web.xml file and i came up with a question concerning url pattern like this syntax /. So what does actually the "/" symbol apply in case I deploy web application in tomcat server as following: host:port/ or host:port/myWeb/

Answer 1

The pattern / will make your servlet the default servlet for the app, meaning it will pick up every pattern that doesn't have another exact match.

URL pattern mapping :

• A string beginning with a / character and ending with a /* suffix is used for path mapping.
• A string beginning with a *. prefix is used as an extension mapping.
• A string containing only the / character indicates the default servlet of the application. In this case the servlet path is the request URI minus the context path and the path info is null.
• All other strings are used for exact matches only.

Rules for path mapping :

1. The container will try to find an exact match of the path of the request to the path of the servlet. A successful match selects the servlet.
2. The container will recursively try to match the longest path-prefix. This is done by stepping down the path tree a directory at a time, using the / character as a path separator. The longest match determines the servlet selected.
3. If the last segment in the URL path contains an extension (e.g. .jsp), the servlet container will try to match a servlet that handles requests for the extension. An extension is defined as the part of the last segment after the last . character.
4. If neither of the previous three rules result in a servlet match, the container will attempt to serve content appropriate for the resource requested. If a default servlet is defined for the application, it will be used.