joustlog

I’m starting a WebWork2 application, and it’s going okay, but I’m not happy at all with the URL’s that WebWork (at least, in its default configuration) requires.

I’m using a combination of actions and JSP. Generally, a form submits to an action, which may print something itself (using webwork dispatching) or redirect to a new JSP or action. And so far, the URL’s are very ugly. Some of you might not realize what I mean by ugly URL’s, so I’ve collected a few to show you.

Some ugly URL’s from around the internet:

• https://www.ebank.us.hsbc.com/servlet/com.hsbc.us.ibank.signon.Logon, HSBC Online Banking
• http://javablogs.com/ViewHotBlogEntries.action;jsessionid=NLAECKIJCELB, java.blogs “hot entries” page
• https://java-synaptics.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=1893&expandFolder=1893&folderID=0, the file listing for a java.net project’s released files
• http://wiki.opensymphony.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1995, the WebWork wiki page for JSP tags

For those of you who don’t agree that those are “bad URL’s” you might want to read the W3C essay Cool URI’s Don’t Change over and over until you agree.

Anyway, WebWork2 seems to force you to use their URL’s, which must end with .jsp and .action (if you’re using JSP and WW2 actions, of course). This is an implementation detail, of course, which language or framework was used to make the site, and I don’t want these implementation details shown to the whole world, making hard-to-remember URL’s which won’t be around if I switch from JSP to Velocity templates, or from WW to Struts.

So, I’m looking for a library or interceptor or servlet or filter or anything that will let me specify what my URL’s are, and which actual physical URL’s they correspond to. I’d like to have a file in my WEB-INF/ that looked like this:

<app-urls>
  <folder name="admin">
    <url path="new-calendar" action="jsp">newCalendar.jsp</url>
    <url path="new-calendar-submit" action="ww2-action">editCalendar</url>
    <url path="edit-calendar" action="jsp">editCalendar.jsp</url>
    <url path="edit-calendar-submit" action="ww2-action">editCalendar</url>
    <folder-root action="page">admin-index.html</folder>
  </folder>
  <url path="calendars" action="ww2-action">calendarList</url>
  <url path="some-old-url.php" action="redirect">calendars</url>
  <folder-root action="ww2-action">frontPage</folder>
</app-urls>

And these would be the only URL’s that existed on the server for this webapp. So, when someone goes to http://site.com/whateverapp/calendars, the calendarList WebWork2 action will be called. When someone goes to http://site.com/whateverapp/admin/, he or she will be shown the contents of admin-index.html.

If the user tried to go to http://site.com/whateverapp/admin/admin-index.html, however, the user would see a 404 not found.

With a scheme like this, a web application would act more like a Java object, the application, which implements an interface, specified by the URL configuration file. I think it would lead to more reliable results from search engines, more memorable URL’s, and

I don’t have much experience with servlets or Java web servers, so if any of you reading this have ever seen something like this, or if you have any ideas about how it could be implemented, please let me know. Maybe if nothing like this exists, I will write it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Code. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.