ResourceHandler conflict with wildcards in Controllers

Question

I'm trying to reserve all paths starting with /static/** for a resource handler. Unfortunately, I have some wildcards deriving out of the root path / in request mappings. Something like this:

What did I try?

• ResourceHandlerRegistry#setOrder:

  @Override
  public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
      registry.addResourceHandler("/static/**")
              .addResourceLocations("classpath:/resources/static/");
  
      registry.setOrder(1);
  }
  

• Various versions of interceptor (with or without order):

  @Override
  public void addInterceptors(InterceptorRegistry registry) {
      registry.addInterceptor(new ResourcesInterceptor())
              .excludePathPatterns("/static/**")
              .order(2);
  }
  

That is a half-hearted success (probably it won't even work if I change mapping to /{profile}/{project}/**), because:

/static/style/home.css      # works
/static/style/home.cssxxx   # 404, works
/static/style               # catched by controller, expected: 404
/static                     # catched by controller, expected: 404

I've found some similar questions, mostly unanswered or with a little dirty solutions, like:

• Exclude manually static path in every controller with wildcard by regex
• Change your mappings
• Manage controllers order
• Create dedicated controller pointed to /static/**
• [...]

Summary:

• I don't want to use regex, because it will be painful in the future
• I also can't change mappings. I know, that it is the simplest way, but I'm just not able to do that.
• Changing an order not working
• Creating dedicated controller still have some issues with paths

I'm looking for a simple soulution, fully automated and preferably from the configuration. The question is: what's the proper way to achieve that?

Answer 1

This issue is caused beause of the way that Spring handles requests from users. There are several HandlerMappings and they are executed in a specified order. Most important for us are these two:

1. RequestMappingHandlerMapping registered in WebMvcConfigurationSupport with order=0 (we can see this in the source code and the documentation)

   /**
    * Return a {@link RequestMappingHandlerMapping} ordered at 0 for mapping
    * requests to annotated controllers.
    */
   

2. AbstractHandlerMapping instantiated in ResourceHandleRegistry with default order Integer.MAX_VALUE-1

   private int order = Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE - 1;
   

When you create a RequestMapping with path /{profile}/{project} and try to reach resource /static/somefile.css, the request you send is grabbed by the RequestMappingHandlerMapping and does not reach the HandlerMapping created by ResourceHandlerRegistry.

A simple solution for this issue is to set order to -1 in addResourceHandlers

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
    registry.addResourceHandler("/static/**")
        .addResourceLocations("classpath:/resources/static/");

    registry.setOrder(-1);
}

Then the proper HandlerMapping will serve static files, and if there is no such file, it will pass execution to your Controllers.

Answer 2

Kinda hacky, but you could use a regex in your profile mapping to exclude static:

For /{profile}:

@RequestMapping("/{profile:^(?:static.+|(?!static).*)$}")

For /{profile}/{project}:

@RequestMapping("/{profile:^(?:static.+|(?!static).*)$}/{project}")

---

EDIT:

Ah, I just saw that you already found regex as a possible solution and were wondering (among other solutions) if that was the proper way to do it.

Personally, my preferred solution would be to change the URI for the Controller. I find all other solutions to be somewhat similar and hacky: fronting static with a controller, using regex for profile URI...

I think I'd fallback on using the regex above if changing the URI isn't possible. I find it explicit.