java - How to create a @RequestMapping @PathVariable to include a / in the parameter?

Question

Is there a way in Spring 3.x to have a PathVariable in a request mapping include a forward /? I've tried different regexs that I thought would have parsed properly, but it seems that they never manage to pick up the forward /.

I found this related SO question, but that is more dependent on URL encoding of parameters, which is not exactly my problem.

I've tried the following @RequestMapping but to no avail:

@RequestMapping(value = "/template/{definitionName:[a-zA-Z0-9_./]+}/{attributeName:.+}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
@RequestMapping(value = "/template/{definitionName}/{attributeName:[^/]+}", method = RequestMethod.GET)

For example, I am trying to match the following URLs:

http://localhost:8880/mustache/template/users/info/user_info.updateable

where

• "users/info" would be definitionName
• "user_info.updateable" would be attributeName

The full method prototype would be:

  @RequestMapping(value = "/template/{definitionName:[a-zA-Z0-9_./]+}/{attributeName:.+}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public static void fetchTemplateDefinition(
            @PathVariable("definitionName") final String definitionName,
            @PathVariable("attributeName") final String attributeName,
            final HttpServletRequest request,
            final HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException
    {...}

Is there any way to match parameters that contain a / in the URL?

Answer 1

It's not possible out of the box. Spring calls PathMatcher.extractUriTemplateVariables() to extract the path variables. The default implementation of PathMatcher is AntPathMatcher and that splits the path and the path pattern into pieces using /as a separator.

The only solution would be to implement your own PathMatcher (or extend the AntPathMatcher) and tell Spring to use it.