Giving multiple URL patterns to Servlet Filter

Question

I am using a Servlet Filter in my JSF application. I have three groups of Web pages in my application, and I want to check Authentication for these pages in my Servlet Filter:

my Folders

/Admin/ *.xhtml

/Supervisor/*.xhtml
/Employee/*.xhtml

and I am writing web.xml like

<filter>
    <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>com.ems.admin.servlet.LoginFilter</filter-class>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/Employee/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/Admin/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/Supervisor/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

but requests like

http://localhost:8080/EMS2/faces/Html/Admin/Upload.xhtml

are not entering into Filter.

I have to provide security to these 3 folders.

How to solve this problem ?

BalusC · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-14 07:28:33Z

155

If an URL pattern starts with /, then it's relative to the context root. The /Admin/* URL pattern would only match pages on http://localhost:8080/EMS2/Admin/* (assuming that /EMS2 is the context path), but you have them actually on http://localhost:8080/EMS2/faces/Html/Admin/*, so your URL pattern never matches.

You need to prefix your URL patterns with /faces/Html as well like so:

<url-pattern>/faces/Html/Admin/*</url-pattern>

You can alternatively also just reconfigure your web project structure/configuration so that you can get rid of the /faces/Html path in the URLs so that you can just open the page by for example http://localhost:8080/EMS2/Admin/Upload.xhtml.

Your filter mapping syntax is all fine. However, a simpler way to specify multiple URL patterns is to just use only one <filter-mapping> with multiple <url-pattern> entries:

<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>LoginFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/faces/Html/Employee/*</url-pattern>
    <url-pattern>/faces/Html/Admin/*</url-pattern>
    <url-pattern>/faces/Html/Supervisor/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

edited Jul 14, 2015 at 7:28

answered Aug 4, 2012 at 15:41

BalusC

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5 Comments

Sebastian vom Meer Over a year ago

As far as I can see multiple url-pattern elements are not allowed and do not work as expected.

BalusC Over a year ago

@SebastianG: Your concrete problem is caused elsewhere. Note that support for multiple <url-pattern> elements was introduced in Servlet 2.5 (part of Java EE 5, released almost 7 years ago). Perhaps you're working on a prehistoric beast, or you've severe configuration problems which causes that your container runs in a fallback modus matching Servlet 2.4 or older, hereby losing all Servlet 2.5 features.

Sebastian Hoffmann Over a year ago

Notice that multiple <filter-mapping> will execute the same filter twice if they match the same ressource, e.g one using /* and another one using /foo.xhtml as url-pattern. I encountered this behaviour on JBoss AS 7.1.

BalusC Over a year ago

@Paranaix: That's indeed specified behavior. Perhaps you're mixing with servlet mappings which will indeed execute only the servlet with best matching URL pattern.

mvmn Over a year ago

stackoverflow.com/questions/12868689/…

Michael Plautz · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-21 13:35:32Z

22

In case you are using the annotation method for filter definition (as opposed to defining them in the web.xml), you can do so by just putting an array of mappings in the @WebFilter annotation:

/**
 * Filter implementation class LoginFilter
 */
@WebFilter(urlPatterns = { "/faces/Html/Employee","/faces/Html/Admin", "/faces/Html/Supervisor"})
public class LoginFilter implements Filter {
    ...

And just as an FYI, this same thing works for servlets using the servlet annotation too:

/**
 * Servlet implementation class LoginServlet
 */
@WebServlet({"/faces/Html/Employee", "/faces/Html/Admin", "/faces/Html/Supervisor"})
public class LoginServlet extends HttpServlet {
    ...

edited Mar 21, 2018 at 13:35

answered Sep 17, 2014 at 19:59

Michael Plautz

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3 Comments

alexander Over a year ago

Isn't it better to extends a Filter instead of HttpServlet even if it is only an example?

Ravindra Gullapalli Over a year ago

A filter can be executed for different servlet URL patterns. You can not replace a filter with a servlet.

Антон Антонов Over a year ago

He wants a filter behavior, not a servlet one. I guess he has already mapped those URLs to servlets.

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