Pretty-Faces redirect loop

Question

hi i'm using pretty faces 3.3.3 in tomcat 7

and this config

<rewrite match="/browse" trailingSlash="append" toCase="lowercase" />
<url-mapping id="browsecategory">
    <pattern value="/browse/" />
    <view-id value="/browser.xhtml" />
</url-mapping>

i want requests without trailing slash after "browse" to be redirected to browse/ (with trailing slash). The background: if the trailing slash is missing, my relative outputLinks are not handeled as subdirectorys, but as files in the current directory.

when i request now

localhost:8081/App/browse 

my browser gets into a redirect loop

EDIT:

is it possible that browse is a reserved keyword? when i replace it with squirrel everything works as expected:

<rewrite match="/squirrel" trailingSlash="append" toCase="lowercase" />
<url-mapping id="browsecategory">
    <pattern value="/squirrel/" />
    <view-id value="/browser.xhtml" />
</url-mapping>

Answer 1

Because of the amount of confusion that has occurred using the <rewrite/> tag in PrettyFaces, we've migrated to a new core architecture for PrettyFaces (//Rewrite 2.0.0.Final) that provides much greater control over application configuration. (Available here http://ocpsoft.org/prettyfaces/)

I would recommend trying PrettyFaces 4 if your environment permits. You can leave your URL-mappings in the pretty-config.xml file if you wish, but you can now define more custom Rewrite rules, more safely, in a Rewrite ConfigurationProvider:

<!-- for JSF 2.x -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.ocpsoft.rewrite</groupId>
    <artifactId>rewrite-servlet</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.0.Final</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.ocpsoft.rewrite</groupId>
    <artifactId>rewrite-config-prettyfaces</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.0.Final</version>
</dependency>

Leave your pretty-config.xml as it is:

<url-mapping id="browsecategory">
    <pattern value="/browse/" />
    <view-id value="/browser.xhtml" />
</url-mapping>

Now also create a ConfigurationProvider to handle your trailing slashes:

public class RewriteConfig extends HttpConfigurationProvider
{
   @Override
   public int priority()
   {
     return 10;
   }

   @Override
   public Configuration getConfiguration(final ServletContext context)
   {
     return ConfigurationBuilder.begin()
       .addRule()
         .when(Direction.isInbound().and(Path.matches("/{p}")))
         .perform(Redirect.to(context.getContextRoot() + "/{p}/"))
         .where("p").matches("^.*[^/]$");
    }
}

Don't forget to register/activate the ConfigurationProvider.

Additionally, you can do your URL-mappings in this configuration file as well, thus removing the need for pretty-config.xml or the PrettyFaces 4 con:

public class RewriteConfig extends HttpConfigurationProvider
{
   @Override
   public int priority()
   {
     return 10;
   }

   @Override
   public Configuration getConfiguration(final ServletContext context)
   {
     return ConfigurationBuilder.begin()

       .addRule(Join.path("/browse/").to("/browser.xhtml"))

       .addRule()
         .when(Direction.isInbound().and(Path.matches("/{p}")))
         .perform(Redirect.to(context.getContextRoot() + "/{p}/"))
         .where("p").matches("^.*[^/]$");
    }
}

I didn't test the regular expression in the matches() clause, but it should be something like that. I hope this helps!