How do I use Spring Boot to serve static content located in Dropbox folder?

Question

I have a Spring Boot web application, and I would like to serve static content located in a shared Dropbox directory on my Linode VPS (~/Dropbox/images). I've read that Spring Boot will automatically serve static content from

"classpath:/META-INF/resources/", "classpath:/resources/", "classpath:/static/", "classpath:/public/", 

but of course my Dropbox directory is not on the classpath.

Although I could configure Apache to serve the images in my Dropbox folder, I would like to take advantage of Spring Security to restrict access of the static content to authenticated users.

Answer 1

You can add your own static resource handler (it overwrites the default), e.g.

@Configuration public class StaticResourceConfiguration extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {     @Override     public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {         registry.addResourceHandler("/**").addResourceLocations("file:/path/to/my/dropbox/");     } } 

There is some documentation about this in Spring Boot, but it's really just a vanilla Spring MVC feature.

Also since spring boot 1.2 (I think) you can simply set spring.resources.staticLocations.

Answer 2

Springboot (via Spring) now makes adding to existing resource handlers easy. See Dave Syers answer. To add to the existing static resource handlers, simply be sure to use a resource handler path that doesn't override existing paths.

The two "also" notes below are still valid.

. . .

[Edit: The approach below is no longer valid]

If you want to extend the default static resource handlers, then something like this seems to work:

@Configuration @AutoConfigureAfter(DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration.class) public class CustomWebMvcAutoConfig extends                     WebMvcAutoConfiguration.WebMvcAutoConfigurationAdapter {    @Override   public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {     String myExternalFilePath = "file:///C:/Temp/whatever/m/";      registry.addResourceHandler("/m/**").addResourceLocations(myExternalFilePath);      super.addResourceHandlers(registry);   }  } 

The call to super.addResourceHandlers sets up the default handlers.

Also:

• Note the trailing slash on the external file path. (Depends on your expectation for URL mappings).
• Consider reviewing the source code of WebMvcAutoConfigurationAdapter.