Howdy, >[kb] OK, but how can my app be agnostic of the context path if I need to do >things like dynamically construct URLs? Why does the need to request a >resource in the same web app constitute a design flaw? Surely this is a >fairly common requirement . . . how else would I index dynamic resources? >Also, if the web app should be completely agnostic of the context path, why >does the HttpServletRequest interface define a method to retrieve it?
The getContextPath method is there primarily to address HTML restrictions (links). Other ways to access dynamic resources revolve around using the docBase as your reference, not the server root, and include the RequestDispatcher calls and ServletContext#getResource calls. Both of these are agnostic of the context path as far as the application developer is concerned, which is good design. As you already mentioned, you can hack around this in various ugly ways, e.g. including the context path as a context-param in web.xml. This is an easy out many people take. But since you said you wanted to know the clean approach, and I was glad to hear that, I'm trying to explain that approach and the reasoning behind it. >[kb] Not entirely sure what you mean here. Are you saying I should write a >servlet that also implements ServletContextListener? If so, how do I No, that's not what I meant. I meant exactly what I said, I'll try it again without spaces when referring to servlet API classes: make your ServletContextListener also a ServletRequestListener. You will get notified when the first request comes in. At that time, you grab the context path and store it so that your other classes can retrieve it without needing an HttpServletRequest object. A filter is also a possible solution, and there are several others. Both the filter and the approach above will run the indexing on the first request, which is not what you want. (Although it's trivial to tie a wget request to the server startup script). Perhaps you can modify your existing indexing class to use ServletContext#getResource calls rather than whatever you're using now that requires the context path. Yoav Shapira This e-mail, including any attachments, is a confidential business communication, and may contain information that is confidential, proprietary and/or privileged. This e-mail is intended only for the individual(s) to whom it is addressed, and may not be saved, copied, printed, disclosed or used by anyone else. If you are not the(an) intended recipient, please immediately delete this e-mail from your computer system and notify the sender. Thank you. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
