how can i exclude from DispatchServlet mapping a folder (resources folder)

Question

My web.xml is: http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5"> TestStruts2

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

<context-param>
    <param-name>
        org.apache.tiles.definition.DefinitionsFactory.DEFINITIONS_CONFIG
    </param-name>
    <param-value>
        /WEB-INF/tiles-defs.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.apache.tiles.web.startup.TilesListener</listener-class>
</listener>   

<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>/WEB-INF/Templates/Jsp/index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>   

I'm using Spring and Tiles2.1 My resource folder is in /WEB-INF/Templates/Resources/ DispatcherServlet is set to map all ("/"). I want to exclude "Resources" folder (that contains images,css) because tomcat doesn't show images and css. It sayes something like: ,,No mapping found for ...."

Answer 1

Take the resources like images, css etc. out of WEB-INF. "WEB-INF" is not for static resources and it's used to contain program code (JSPs, class files, libraries, etc.) and prevent access from outside. It is not a good practice to put your resources into your project archive (.war, .ear) because your package will be very heavy weight to deploy.

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

means that your dispatcherServlet maps the requests http://host/applicationName/*

You can put your resources into vhost/host.com/httpdocs/images of your host independent from your java application. say:

http://host/myimages/

and relatively accessable from your templeates (jsps)

<img src="/myimages/myicon.png"/>

therefore your packages would be smaller and speedy to deploy ;)