Servlet for serving static content

Question

I deploy a webapp on two different containers (Tomcat and Jetty), but their default servlets for serving the static content have a different way of handling the URL structur

Answer 1

Abstract template for a static resource servlet

Partly based on this blog from 2007, here's a modernized and highly reusable abstract template for a servlet which properly deals with caching, ETag, If-None-Match and If-Modified-Since (but no Gzip and Range support; just to keep it simple; Gzip could be done with a filter or via container configuration).

public abstract class StaticResourceServlet extends HttpServlet {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private static final long ONE_SECOND_IN_MILLIS = TimeUnit.SECONDS.toMillis(1);
    private static final String ETAG_HEADER = "W/\"%s-%s\"";
    private static final String CONTENT_DISPOSITION_HEADER = "inline;filename=\"%1$s\"; filename*=UTF-8''%1$s";

    public static final long DEFAULT_EXPIRE_TIME_IN_MILLIS = TimeUnit.DAYS.toMillis(30);
    public static final int DEFAULT_STREAM_BUFFER_SIZE = 102400;

    @Override
    protected void doHead(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException ,IOException {
        doRequest(request, response, true);
    }

    @Override
    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        doRequest(request, response, false);
    }

    private void doRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, boolean head) throws IOException {
        response.reset();
        StaticResource resource;

        try {
            resource = getStaticResource(request);
        }
        catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
            response.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_BAD_REQUEST);
            return;
        }

        if (resource == null) {
            response.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_NOT_FOUND);
            return;
        }

        String fileName = URLEncoder.encode(resource.getFileName(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name());
        boolean notModified = setCacheHeaders(request, response, fileName, resource.getLastModified());

        if (notModified) {
            response.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_NOT_MODIFIED);
            return;
        }

        setContentHeaders(response, fileName, resource.getContentLength());

        if (head) {
            return;
        }

        writeContent(response, resource);
    }

    /**
     * Returns the static resource associated with the given HTTP servlet request. This returns null when
     * the resource does actually not exist. The servlet will then return a HTTP 404 error.
     * @param request The involved HTTP servlet request.
     * @return The static resource associated with the given HTTP servlet request.
     * @throws IllegalArgumentException When the request is mangled in such way that it's not recognizable as a valid
     * static resource request. The servlet will then return a HTTP 400 error.
     */
    protected abstract StaticResource getStaticResource(HttpServletRequest request) throws IllegalArgumentException;

    private boolean setCacheHeaders(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, String fileName, long lastModified) {
        String eTag = String.format(ETAG_HEADER, fileName, lastModified);
        response.setHeader("ETag", eTag);
        response.setDateHeader("Last-Modified", lastModified);
        response.setDateHeader("Expires", System.currentTimeMillis() + DEFAULT_EXPIRE_TIME_IN_MILLIS);
        return notModified(request, eTag, lastModified);
    }

    private boolean notModified(HttpServletRequest request, String eTag, long lastModified) {
        String ifNoneMatch = request.getHeader("If-None-Match");

        if (ifNoneMatch != null) {
            String[] matches = ifNoneMatch.split("\\s*,\\s*");
            Arrays.sort(matches);
            return (Arrays.binarySearch(matches, eTag) > -1 || Arrays.binarySearch(matches, "*") > -1);
        }
        else {
            long ifModifiedSince = request.getDateHeader("If-Modified-Since");
            return (ifModifiedSince + ONE_SECOND_IN_MILLIS > lastModified); // That second is because the header is in seconds, not millis.
        }
    }

    private void setContentHeaders(HttpServletResponse response, String fileName, long contentLength) {
        response.setHeader("Content-Type", getServletContext().getMimeType(fileName));
        response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", String.format(CONTENT_DISPOSITION_HEADER, fileName));

        if (contentLength != -1) {
            response.setHeader("Content-Length", String.valueOf(contentLength));
        }
    }

    private void writeContent(HttpServletResponse response, StaticResource resource) throws IOException {
        try (
            ReadableByteChannel inputChannel = Channels.newChannel(resource.getInputStream());
            WritableByteChannel outputChannel = Channels.newChannel(response.getOutputStream());
        ) {
            ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(DEFAULT_STREAM_BUFFER_SIZE);
            long size = 0;

            while (inputChannel.read(buffer) != -1) {
                buffer.flip();
                size += outputChannel.write(buffer);
                buffer.clear();
            }

            if (resource.getContentLength() == -1 && !response.isCommitted()) {
                response.setHeader("Content-Length", String.valueOf(size));
            }
        }
    }

}

Use it together with the below interface representing a static resource.

interface StaticResource {

    /**
     * Returns the file name of the resource. This must be unique across all static resources. If any, the file
     * extension will be used to determine the content type being set. If the container doesn't recognize the
     * extension, then you can always register it as <mime-type> in web.xml.
     * @return The file name of the resource.
     */
    public String getFileName();

    /**
     * Returns the last modified timestamp of the resource in milliseconds.
     * @return The last modified timestamp of the resource in milliseconds.
     */
    public long getLastModified();

    /**
     * Returns the content length of the resource. This returns -1 if the content length is unknown.
     * In that case, the container will automatically switch to chunked encoding if the response is already
     * committed after streaming. The file download progress may be unknown.
     * @return The content length of the resource.
     */
    public long getContentLength();

    /**
     * Returns the input stream with the content of the resource. This method will be called only once by the
     * servlet, and only when the resource actually needs to be streamed, so lazy loading is not necessary.
     * @return The input stream with the content of the resource.
     * @throws IOException When something fails at I/O level.
     */
    public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException;

}

All you need is just extending from the given abstract servlet and implementing the getStaticResource() method according the javadoc.

Concrete example serving from file system:

Here's a concrete example which serves it via an URL like /files/foo.ext from the local disk file system:

@WebServlet("/files/*")
public class FileSystemResourceServlet extends StaticResourceServlet {

    private File folder;

    @Override
    public void init() throws ServletException {
        folder = new File("/path/to/the/folder");
    }

    @Override
    protected StaticResource getStaticResource(HttpServletRequest request) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        String pathInfo = request.getPathInfo();

        if (pathInfo == null || pathInfo.isEmpty() || "/".equals(pathInfo)) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }

        String name = URLDecoder.decode(pathInfo.substring(1), StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name());
        final File file = new File(folder, Paths.get(name).getFileName().toString());

        return !file.exists() ? null : new StaticResource() {
            @Override
            public long getLastModified() {
                return file.lastModified();
            }
            @Override
            public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException {
                return new FileInputStream(file);
            }
            @Override
            public String getFileName() {
                return file.getName();
            }
            @Override
            public long getContentLength() {
                return file.length();
            }
        };
    }

}

Concrete example serving from database:

Here's a concrete example which serves it via an URL like /files/foo.ext from the database via an EJB service call which returns your entity having a byte[] content property:

@WebServlet("/files/*")
public class YourEntityResourceServlet extends StaticResourceServlet {

    @EJB
    private YourEntityService yourEntityService;

    @Override
    protected StaticResource getStaticResource(HttpServletRequest request) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        String pathInfo = request.getPathInfo();

        if (pathInfo == null || pathInfo.isEmpty() || "/".equals(pathInfo)) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }

        String name = URLDecoder.decode(pathInfo.substring(1), StandardCharsets.UTF_8.name());
        final YourEntity yourEntity = yourEntityService.getByName(name);

        return (yourEntity == null) ? null : new StaticResource() {
            @Override
            public long getLastModified() {
                return yourEntity.getLastModified();
            }
            @Override
            public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException {
                return new ByteArrayInputStream(yourEntityService.getContentById(yourEntity.getId()));
            }
            @Override
            public String getFileName() {
                return yourEntity.getName();
            }
            @Override
            public long getContentLength() {
                return yourEntity.getContentLength();
            }
        };
    }

}