Can we have more than one @Path annotation for same REST method

Question

Can we have more than one @Path annotation for same REST method i.e. the method executed is the same, but it is executed on accessing more than one URL?

E.g.: I want to run the searchNames() method on both http://a/b/c and http://a/b.

Answer 1

You can't have mutliple @Path annotations on a single method. It causes a "duplicate annotation" syntax error.

However, there's a number of ways you can effectively map two paths to a method.

Regular expressions in @Path annotation

The @Path annotation in JAX-RS accepts parameters, whose values can be restricted using regular expressions.

This annotation:

@Path("a/{parameter: path1|path2}")

would enable the method to be reached by requests for both /a/path1 and /a/path2. If you need to work with subpaths, escape slashes: {a:path1\\/subPath1|path2\\/subPath2}

Serving responses with a redirection status code

Alternatively, you could set up a redirection. Here's a way to do it in Jersey (the reference implementation of JAX-RS), by defining another subresource. This is just an example, if you prefer a different way of handling redirections, feel free to use it.

@Path("basepath")
public class YourBaseResource {

  //this gets injected after the class is instantiated by Jersey    
  @Context
  UriInfo uriInfo; 

  @Path("a/b")
  @GET
  public Responce method1(){
    return Response.ok("blah blah").build();
  }

  @Path("a/b/c")
  @GET
  public Response method2(){
    UriBuilder addressBuilder = uriInfo.getBaseUriBuilder();
    addressBuilder.path("a/b");
    return Response.seeOther(addressBuilder.build()).build();
  }

}

Using a servlet filter to rewrite URLs

If you're going to need such functionality often, I suggest intercepting the incoming requests using a servlet filter and rewriting the paths on the fly. This should help you keep all redirections in one place. Ideally, you could use a ready library. UrlRewriteFilter can do the trick, as long as you're fine with a BSD license (check out their google code site for details)

Another option is to handle this with a proxy set up in front of your Java app. You can set up an Apache server to offer basic caching and rewrite rules without complicating your Java code.