How to exclude url mappings from @RequestMapping in Spring?

Question

I've a request mapping that handles any string after the context e.g. www.example.com/anystring

I'm handling it as follows:

@RequestMapping(value="/{str}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String getApp(@PathVariable("str") String anyString, ModelMap model) {
        //Do something
    }

The problem is I've 2-3 URLs in my app where the URL is as follows: www.example.com/about, www.example.com/contact etc.

I wrote Request Mappings for them as follows:

@RequestMapping("/about")
    public String getAboutPage() {
        return "about";
    }

But obviously, since I've already declared that any string should be handled by the getApp(), the getAboutPage() never gets executed. How can I exclude /about, /contact etc from getApp() mapping. We can obviously add another keyword to the URL string, but that's not possible in my app use case. Kindly help. :(

EDIT:

Should I just handle /about, /contact inside getApp() like:

@RequestMapping(value="/{str}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String getApp(@PathVariable("str") String anyString, ModelMap model) {

    if(anyString.equals("about")){
     //do about related stuff
    }

    if(anyString.equals("contact")){
     //do contact related stuff
    }

    //Do something
    }

Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Specifying the HTTP request method in the "catch-all" mapping is probably making the path matcher consider it to be more specific than the absolute path mappings.

Specify the request method on the absolute paths, and the mapping comparator should order the absolute matches before the one containing the path variable.

eg.

@RequestMapping("/about", method = RequestMethod.GET)

Alternatively, you could remove the method specification on the catch-all:

@RequestMapping("/{str}")

It is entirely dependent upon your url structure and whether or not any of those paths will accept different http request methods.