UrlRewriteFilter

Based on the popular and very useful mod_rewrite for apache, UrlRewriteFilter is a Java Web Filter for any J2EE compliant web application server (such as Resin, Orion or Tomcat), which allows you to rewrite URLs before they get to your code. It is a very powerful tool just like Apache's mod_rewrite.

URL rewriting is very common with Apache Web Server (see mod_rewrite's rewriting guide) but has not been possible in most java web application servers. The main things it is used for are:

• URL Tidyness / URL Abstraction - keep URLs tidy irrespective of the underlying technology or framework (JSP, Servlet, Struts etc).
• Browser Detection - Allows you to rewrite URLs based on request HTTP headers (such as user-agent or charset).
• Date based rewriting - Allows you to forward or redirect to other URL's based on the date/time (good for planned outages).
• Moved content - enable a graceful move of content or even a change in CMS.
• Tiny/Friendly URL's (i.e. blah.com/latest can be redirected to blah.com/download/ver1.2.46.2/setup.exe)
• A Servlet mapping engine (see Method Invocation)

UrlRewriteFilter uses an xml file, called urlrewrite.xml (it goes into the WEB-INF directory), for configuration. Most parameters can be Perl5 style Regular Expressions or Wildcard Expressions. This makes it very powerful indeed.

See the manual for more information.

Quick Start

• Download the zip and extract it into your context's directory ie, so that urlrewrite.xml goes into the WEB-INF directory.
• Add the following to your WEB-INF/web.xml (add it near the top above your servlet mappings (if you have any)):

<filter>
   <filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
   <filter-class>org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriteFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
   <filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
   <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
   <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
   <dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>

• Add your own configuration to the WEB-INF/urlrewrite.xml that was created.
• Restart the context.

You can visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/rewrite-status (or whatever the address of your local webapp and context) to see output (note: this page is only viewable from localhost).

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