How do I map static assets in my Spring app?

Question

I'm using Spring 3.0.5. I have all my static assets in a folder named "static" at the root of my web-app (at the same level as WEB-INF). How do I map URLs of the form "http://mydomain.com/context-path/static/some-asset" to my "static" folder?

This is complicated by the fact that I have a view resolver that maps to the root context (from my web.xml) ...

 <!-- Declare a Spring MVC DispatcherServlet as usual -->  
 <servlet>  
     <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>  
     <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>  
     <!-- Configure DispatcherServlet to use AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext  
        instead of the default XmlWebApplicationContext -->  
     <init-param>  
         <param-name>contextClass</param-name>  
         <param-value>org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext</param-value>  
     </init-param>  
     <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>  
 </servlet>  

 <servlet-mapping>  
     <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>  
     <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>  
 </servlet-mapping>

Ok, thanks for any help, - Dave

PS - Adding mvc:resources didn't seem to heal the pain. I added to my parentContext.xml file ...

<beans xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">

<mvc:resources mapping="/static/**" location="/static/"/>

but then got the exceptions, "SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet dispatcher threw exception javax.servlet.ServletException: No adapter for handler [com.myco.systems.leadsmonitor.web.controller.HomeController@6870c52d]: Does your handler implement a supported interface like Controller?" when I visited my home page "/".

Answer 1

In addition to using <mvc:resources />, make sure you have this line in the same file:

<mvc:annotation-driven />

I don't know why it happens, but when you use <mvc:resources />, it disables some really important part of the MVC mechanism -- respecting your Controller and RequestMapping annotations I believe. I guess <mvc:annotation-driven /> tells your computer that you really, really need it (?).

Good luck. I just struggled through the same problem. Here's what my final looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">

    <!-- Explicitly enables the Spring MVC @Controller programming model -->
    <mvc:annotation-driven />

    <mvc:resources mapping="/static/**" location="/static/" />

    <context:component-scan
        base-package="com.seemikecode.controller" />

    <bean id="viewResolver"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
        <property name="viewClass"
            value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView" />
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>
</beans>

Answer 2

The best option is to use <mvc:resources />