Is there an equivalent to mod_rewrite in seam

[pete007]

Hello,

some of my forms depend on the location of the client.

When I call the application the first time, I can give the location in as a parameter.

But if I store it in the session, the session can expire and the parameter is lost. So I thought about using an URL prefix for my application.

Instead of calling:

http://myhost/gdc/form.seam

I want to use:

http://myhost/gdc/PARAMETER/form.seam

and have the value of PARAMETER accessed in my application.

Is there a way to do this in seam?

..

Otherwise I thought about saving the IP addresses in the DB and selecting the value dependent on the IP.

How can I read the clients IP address from within a form?

..

Are there even better solutions for my task?

Thanks in advance, Peter

[damianharvey.damianharvey.gmail.com]

Have a look at UrlRewrite which is bundled with Seam. You should be able to change your URL from http://myhost/gdc/form.seam?parameter=PARAMETER into what you require (or something very close to it).

Cheers,

Damian.

[pete007]

This sounds wonderful, thanks a lot! :D

I only have some trouble to get it to work.
I have added this blocks to the beginning of web.xml:

    <!-- URL Rewrite -->

    <filter>
      <filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
      <filter-class>org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriteFilter</filter-class>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
      <filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>

Then I created my urlrewrite.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE urlrewrite PUBLIC "-//tuckey.org//DTD UrlRewrite 3.0//EN" "http://tuckey.org/res/dtds/urlrewrite3.0.dtd">
<urlrewrite>
  <rule>
    <from>^/gdc/([A-Za-z0-9]+)/([*]+)$</from>
    <to>/gdc/$2?start=$1</to>
  </rule>
</urlrewrite>

So far, so good, but on deploy I get the following Exception:

11:36:56,437 INFO  [EARDeployer] Init J2EE application: file:/E:/qi/installs/jboss/server/default/deploy/gdc.ear
11:36:58,640 WARN  [SessionFactoryObjectFactory] InitialContext did not implement EventContext
11:37:00,125 INFO  [ServletContextListener] Welcome to Seam 2.0.0.GA
11:37:02,515 WARN  [Initialization] Did not install PojoCache due to NoClassDefFoundError: org/jgroups/MembershipListener
11:37:03,406 ERROR [[/gdc]] Exception starting filter UrlRewriteFilter
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriteFilter
        at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1358)
        at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1204)
        ...

Then after some thinking I found the urlrewritefilter.jar in my project/lib-directory and copied it to the jboss/server/default/deploy/lib-directory, and it deployed without error.

Now I only need the right syntax to get it to work.

I tried to enter the following URL in the new format:

http://localhost:8080/gdc/roomsbyname.seam?start=Terminal1

http://localhost:8080/gdc/Terminal1/roomsbyname.seam

But I only get an 404 with the message:

The requested resource (/gdc/Terminal1/roomsbyname.seam) is not available.

What have I forgotten? On the homepage, something is written that I have to put the Filter before my ServletMappings?!? Do I have any? I put the Filter as the first element.

So, how can I debug, if the filter does anything at all?

[pete007]

UPDATE: I changed the rule to

<rule>
  <from>^/([^/]*)/(.*)$</from>
  <to type="redirect">/gis47user/$2?start=$1</to>
</rule>

Now this page

http://localhost:8080/gis47user/Terminal1/roomsbyname.seam

gets redirected to

http://localhost:8080/gis47user/roomsbyname.seam?start=Terminal1

but I need the URL to stay as it is.

I removed type="redirect" to use the forward-type, but this does not work.

Has anybody an idea??

Can I define the parameter start to be used an passed along in all my forms with some rule in my pages.xml??

[norman]

Several of the Seam examples (wiki, dvdstore, seambay) use URLRewrite.  I'd suggest starting there to get an idea how to write the rules.

As a side note, Seam 2.1 will have a much simpler way to specify rewrite rules that work both for incoming and outgoing rewrites.

[pete007]

Ah, looking forward to Seam 2.1, simpler is always good.

Okay, I started there, got the same idea as before, but this time I realised, what went wrong, thanks for the hint!

The real problem is, hopefully:

How do I reference an image placed in the root deployer?

Previously, I used in my forms images like:

../images/mainmenu_rooms.png

Now I need something like:

../images/mainmenu_rooms.png for the normal stuff
../../images/mainmenu_rooms.png for the rewrite stuff

So, the little html programmer inside me wanted to use:

/images/mainmenu_rooms.png

But this gets converted to:

/gdc/images/mainmenu_rooms.png

because it is starting with a slash.

btw, wouldnt it be good to have a parameter for using the img-filename as htmlAltValue, at least in the debug mode?

And how do I highlight text inside of code areas?

[norman]

I don't have any experience with trying to use urlrewrite with URLs outside of the context-root of the web application. It's definitely not a path I'd want to go down.

[pete007]

Me neither, but I have to generate new images, so I cannot put them in the ear file or anywhere else, right?

Sorry, maybe I formulated it a little bit misunderstandable. The urlrewrite works. This problem is new and completely without urlrewrite.

I have for example a simple image:

http://localhost:8080/images/simple.png

and I can hardcode it into my application with:

<h:graphicImage value="http://localhost:8080/images/simple.png"/>

This works great on my development machine, but when I deploy it to a production machine, it won't work.

But when I try to use it without the hostpart, something is prepending the project name:

<h:graphicImage value="/images/simple.png"/>

so the link in the html is like:

http://localhost:8080/gdc/images/simple.png

Can I turn off this behaviour by a page filter or something?

[pete007]

Now I found a way to refer to files in the images folder of my server.

HACK: he-he

<h:graphicImage value="/../images/simple.png"/>

gets parsed as:

<img src="/gis47user/../images/simple.png" alt="" />

tested with ie and ff

good? bad?

What would be the correct way? Is there any?

Greetings, Pete

[davidfed]

You could add this to your components.xml:

   <factory name="rootPath" value="#{facesContext.externalContext.request.scheme}://#{facesContext.externalContext.request.serverName}:#{facesContext.externalContext.request.serverPort}"/>

and then use it like this:

 <h:graphicImage value="#{rootPath}/images/simple.png"/>

[pete007]

Hello, this works well, and I can use it even from forms in subdirectories. Thank you!