urlwrite

Based on the popular and very useful mod_rewrite for apache, UrlRewriteFilter is a Java Web Filter for any J2EE compliant web application server (such as Resin, Orion or Tomcat), which allows you to rewrite URLs before they get to your code. It is a very powerful tool just like Apache's mod_rewrite.

URL rewriting is very common with Apache Web Server (see mod_rewrite's rewriting guide) but has not been possible in most java web application servers. The main things it is used for are:

    * URL Tidyness / URL Abstraction - keep URLs tidy irrespective of the underlying technology or framework (JSP, Servlet, Struts etc).
    * Browser Detection - Allows you to rewrite URLs based on request HTTP headers (such as user-agent or charset).
    * Date based rewriting - Allows you to forward or redirect to other URL's based on the date/time (good for planned outages).
    * Moved content - enable a graceful move of content or even a change in CMS.
    * Tiny/Friendly URL's (i.e. blah.com/latest can be redirected to blah.com/download/ver1.2.46.2/setup.exe)
    * A Servlet mapping engine (see Method Invocation)

UrlRewriteFilter uses an xml file, called urlrewrite.xml (it goes into the WEB-INF directory), for configuration. Most parameters can be Perl5 style Regular Expressions or Wildcard Expressions. This makes it very powerful indeed.