How can I serve static content from CXF / JAX-RS with my rest API mapped to root context?

Question

I have a rest API using CXF to implement JAX-RS where the REST endpoints are directly on the root context.

For example if my root context is localhost:8080/myservice

And my endpoints are:
localhost:8080/myservice/resource1
localhost:8080/myservice/resource2

But I want to serve static content like this:
localhost:8080/myservice/docs/swagger.json

In my web.xml I'd like to do something like this:

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>CXFServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/docs/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

But that doesn't work, the CXFServlet picks up all requests and I could not find a way to configure CXF / JAX-RS to serve my static content without including new libraries and creating byte streams, etc. which I don't want to do. I want to just map to the default servlet.

The CXF documentation is not easy to follow, and I tried unsuccessfully to do the following:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>CXFServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet</servlet-class>
  <init-param>
    <param-name>static-resources-list</param-name>
    <param-value>
      /docs/(\S)+\.html
      /docs/(\S)+\.json
    </param-value>
  </init-param>
</servlet>

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I found the solution thanks to this link!

Below is my servlet config in my web.xml to serve static resources with a CXFServlet that is mapped to root.

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>CXFServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>redirects-list</param-name>
        <param-value>
          /docs/(\S)+\.html
          /docs/(\S)+\.json
    </param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>redirect-attributes</param-name>
        <param-value>
          javax.servlet.include.request_uri
    </param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>redirect-servlet-name</param-name>
        <param-value>default</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>CXFServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Hope this helps someone else.

Answer 2

You can serve static content by adding it to CXF Jetty resource handler:

<bean id="jettyHTTPServerEngine" class="org.apache.cxf.transport.http_jetty.JettyHTTPServerEngine">
    <property name="threadingParameters" ref="threadingParameters" />
    <property name="port" value="8080" />
      <property name="handlers">
          <list>
              <ref bean="contextHandler" />
          </list>
      </property>
  </bean>

    <bean name="contextHandler" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler">
        <property name="contextPath" value="/content"/>
        <property name="handler" ref="resourceHandler"/>
    </bean>    

    <bean id="resourceHandler" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ResourceHandler">
        <property name="resourceBase" value="#{classpathResourceResolver.path}"/>
        <property name="directoriesListed" value="true"/>
    </bean>

<bean id="classpathResourceResolver" class="com.myapp.ClasspathResourceResolver">
    <property name="resourceLocation" value="myresources/files"/>
  </bean>

where property contextPath is URL suffix, e.g. you will get content at localhost:8080/content Be aware, that Jetty ResourceHandler accepts only Java path (plain), not Spring classpath. So you need custom converter from Spring to Java canonical path, see:

public class ClasspathResourceResolver
{
    private String resourceLocation;

    public String getPath()
    {
        if (StringUtils.isNotEmpty(resourceLocation))
        {
            try
            {
                return new ClassPathResource(resourceLocation).getFile().getCanonicalPath();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                log.warn("Unable to resolve classpath as canonical path", e);
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

    public void setResourceLocation(String resourceLocation)
    {
        this.resourceLocation = resourceLocation;
    }
}

Answer 3

Adding my 2 cents since I was inspired by this question and answers.

I wanted this to configure in JAVA and found out also that I had to use different regex.

I'll put the code here but explanation first:

My app was using spring-boot + cxf. CXF is mapped to root "/" and CXF was unable to server static resources, so I added redirect-servlet-name param that says "hey cxf, if request ends with .css, dispatch the requet to dispatcherServlet".

Why dispatcher servlet? It's spring-boot's default servlet that is for example able to server static content from specific folders.

@Bean
public ServletRegistrationBean<CXFServlet> servletRegistrationBean() {
    ServletRegistrationBean<CXFServlet> x = new ServletRegistrationBean<>(new CXFServlet(), "/*");

    Map<String, String> params = new HashMap<>();
    params.put("redirects-list", ".*\\.css$"); // space separated list if multiple values are required
    params.put("redirect-servlet-name", "dispatcherServlet");
    x.setInitParameters(params);
    return x;
}

Answer 4

CXFServlet able to serve static content directly; use 'static-resources-list' init-param with space separated list of static resource from classpath:

        <init-param>
            <param-name>static-resources-list</param-name>
            <param-value>/static/(\w)+.css</param-value>
        </init-param>

Its also possible to set HTTP response Cache-Control header via 'static-cache-control':

        <init-param>
            <param-name>static-cache-control</param-name>
            <param-value>public, max-age=31536000</param-value>
        </init-param>

Apache CXF Servlet Transport, section 'Redirecting requests and serving the static content'