spring mvc:resources tag and 404 error

Question

I'm trying to use tag <mvc:resources>

this is my project structure

what I want is to access to javascript in js folder and css in styles folder
however, whenever I add this to my dispatcher-servlet.xml

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

I got error 404, when run the project (the project will redirect to login.htm which is login.jsp page)

this is my dispatcher-servlet.xml code

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.1.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.1.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.2.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.2.xsd">

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

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

    <bean id="viewResolver"
          class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"
          p:prefix="/WEB-INF/"
          p:suffix=".jsp" />
    <tx:annotation-driven/>
    .
    .
    .
</beans>

this is web.xml

<context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
    <session-config>
        <session-timeout>
            30
        </session-timeout>
    </session-config>
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>redirect.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>

I don't know why I delete the line <mvc:resources... the project run correctly, but when add this one to the project, I get 404 error immediately. I think this one make some conflict with the current project.

Answer 1

The answer is here:

Using <mvc:resources .../> in spring 3 causes all other views to stop working

Quoting the author: "<mvc:resources> requires <mvc:annotation-driven> (or explicitly declared handler mappings, etc)."

That did the trick for me.

Answer 2

You need to set the full path in the location attribute, like this:

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

One a separate note, I would recommend you put your resources all in one folder all together, for example "assets", because in your current setup a malicious user can access anything under WEB-INF/ which is obviously not what you want.

Let me know if this works.

Ayman