Spring : serving static resources outside context root

Question

in a web app, I need to serve static contents (images) located outside the application context directory. The overall application architecture requires me to use Tomcat to perform this. I thought I could benefit from Spring's <mvc:resources> to configure a mapping between application URLs and directory contents. But AFAIK it's mapping attribute only handles context relative, or classpath mappings. Hence, what I'd like to use :

<mvc:resources location="/images/**" mapping="/absolute/path/to/image/dir"/>

doesn't work. As I'd rather avoid writing a simple file transfer servlet, I'd be glad if anyone could give me some pointers on existing Spring based solutions/workarounds.

Many thanks.

Homer

Answer 1

<mvc:resources> can serve resources from the outside, you need to use the usual Spring resource path syntax:

<mvc:resources mapping="/images/**" location="file:/absolute/path/to/image/dir/"/> 

Answer 2

There is one more simple correction

the code should be

<mvc:resources mapping="/images/**" location="file:/absolute/path/to/image/dir/"/>

Did you notice the difference ? You need to put '/' at the end of the absolute path.

or you can use the java configuration

@Override
public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
    String rootPath = System.getProperty("user.home");
    String imagePath = "file:"+rootPath + File.separator + "tmpFiles/";
    System.out.println(imagePath);
    registry.addResourceHandler("/resources/**").addResourceLocations("resources/");
    registry.addResourceHandler("/tmpFiles/**").addResourceLocations(imagePath);
}

Its working for me.