Singling out the root document (/) in a web.xml <url-pattern> mapping

   Hi!

In the web.xml file you just have to specify the correct filter mapping
Example :  
<filter>
    <filter-name>Authentication Filter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>AuthenticationFilter</filter-class>
  </filter>

  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>Authentication Filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/index.jsp</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>

This example binds an authentication filter to the /index.jsp page

  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>Authentication Filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/protected/</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>
This example binds an authentication filter to all pages under the directory/path "protected"
and so if you have the filter mapping like this
  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>Authentication Filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>
the authentication filter is bound to the entire site and is triggered on every single request.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
  Tomas Helgi

Nope, please read my question again.  I know how to bind the filter to "domain.com/index.jsp".  I _want_ to bind the filter to "domain.com/".  Now, if I wanted to bind the filter to "domain.com/sub/" I would do it like this:

  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>Authentication Filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/sub/</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>

So the natural url-pattern for binding to "domain.com/" should be

  <filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>Authentication Filter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
  </filter-mapping>

Except that "/" has been overloaded to mean _all_ files.  So how do I bind to only "domain.com/"?

I don't think you can do it from web.xml.  You could put a filter in for your Tomcat server, and redirect if the request is just for domain.com/ .

Or you can put Apache up front, and do more complicated redirection with htaccess-like commands.

I thought of a hack.  Go ahead and map to "/"   and in your doFilter method you could have somthing like  
if("index.xhtml".equals(request.getServletPath()){
                                                                                filter code  and chain
}

If that doesn't work, then you could try the same idea after changing the file name to index.jsp( if that is ok).

Yes, if you use a filter in Tomcat you can do it.

I forgot the slash.
if("/index.xhtml".equals(request.getServletPath()){

Thanks for the ideas and the source code to clairfy.  I can't quite get away with the if ("/index.xhtml hack because the filter has to work for other pages, but I could send in the page name to trigger on as a filter parameter.

First I'm going to try playing around with Apache, which I think is running up front already, and see if I can get it to redirect in some different manner or at a later time.  (or maybe replace the redirection with a filter).

I happened to come across a simpler answer; glad I had one more look.  This url-pattern:

<url-pattern>//*</url-pattern>

Is what I was looking for; this maps to the root page (eg domain.com/) and doesn't seem to match anything else.  I can't find any documentation for why this pattern works; I just found it mentioned in a post on the Sun forums (http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=283180&messageID=3479996).

I am glad you found a solution.  You should just keep the points. You did the research.  
>I can't find any documentation for why this pattern works;  
Neither can I.    

I agree with rrz@871311 -- you found the best solution, you should keep the points.

Totally weird that your solution works.  We should keep this question on EE, just not award points.

You can post a request to refund points to the community support list.