What s the difference between getRequestURI and getPathInfo methods in HttpServletRequest

Question

I m making a simple  very lightweight front-controller  I need to match request paths to different handlers  actions  in order to choose the correct one   On my local machine HttpServletRequest getPathInfo   and HttpServletRequest getRequestURI   return the same results  But I m not sure what will they return in the production environment   So  what s the difference between these method and what should I choose

User · Answer

I will put a small comparison table here (just to have it somewhere):

Servlet is mapped as /test%3F/* and the application is deployed under /app.

http://30thh.loc:8480/app/test%3F/a%3F+b;jsessionid=S%3F+ID?p+1=c+d&p+2=e+f#a

Method              URL-Decoded Result           
----------------------------------------------------
getContextPath()        no      /app
getLocalAddr()                  127.0.0.1
getLocalName()                  30thh.loc
getLocalPort()                  8480
getMethod()                     GET
getPathInfo()           yes     /a?+b
getProtocol()                   HTTP/1.1
getQueryString()        no      p+1=c+d&p+2=e+f
getRequestedSessionId() no      S%3F+ID
getRequestURI()         no      /app/test%3F/a%3F+b;jsessionid=S+ID
getRequestURL()         no      http://30thh.loc:8480/app/test%3F/a%3F+b;jsessionid=S+ID
getScheme()                     http
getServerName()                 30thh.loc
getServerPort()                 8480
getServletPath()        yes     /test?
getParameterNames()     yes     [p 2, p 1]
getParameter("p 1")     yes     c d

In the example above the server is running on the localhost:8480 and the name 30thh.loc was put into OS hosts file.

Comments

"+" is handled as space only in the query string
Anchor "#a" is not transferred to the server. Only the browser can work with it.
If the url-pattern in the servlet mapping does not end with * (for example /test or *.jsp), getPathInfo() returns null.

If Spring MVC is used

Method getPathInfo() returns null.
Method getServletPath() returns the part between the context path and the session ID. In the example above the value would be /test?/a?+b
Be careful with URL encoded parts of @RequestMapping and @RequestParam in Spring. It is buggy (current version 3.2.4) and is usually not working as expected.

User · Answer

Let s break down the full URL that a client would type into their address bar to reach your servlet   http   www example com 80 awesome-application path to servlet path info a 1 amp b 2 boo  The parts are    scheme  http hostname  www example com port  80 context path  awesome-application servlet path  path to servlet path info  path info query  a 1 amp b 2 fragment  boo   The request URI  returned by getRequestURI  corresponds to parts 4  5 and 6    incidentally  even though you re not asking for this  the method getRequestURL would give you parts 1  2  3  4  5 and 6    Now    part 4  the context path  is used to select your particular application out of many other applications that may be running in the server part 5  the servlet path  is used to select a particular servlet out of many other servlets that may be bundled in your application s WAR part 6  the path info  is interpreted by your servlet s logic  e g  it may point to some resource controlled by your servlet   part 7  the query  is also made available to your servlet using getQueryString part 8  the fragment  is not even sent to the server and is relevant and known only to the client   The following always holds  except for URL encoding differences    requestURI   contextPath   servletPath   pathInfo   The following example from the Servlet 3 0 specification is very helpful     Note  image follows  I don t have the time to recreate in HTML

User · Answer

Consider the following servlet conf       lt servlet gt           lt servlet-name gt NewServlet lt  servlet-name gt           lt servlet-class gt NewServlet lt  servlet-class gt       lt  servlet gt       lt servlet-mapping gt           lt servlet-name gt NewServlet lt  servlet-name gt           lt url-pattern gt  NewServlet   lt  url-pattern gt       lt  servlet-mapping gt    Now  when I hit the URL http   localhost 8084 JSPTemp1 NewServlet jhi  it will invoke NewServlet as it is mapped with the pattern described above   Here   getRequestURI       JSPTemp1 NewServlet jhi getPathInfo      jhi   We have those ones    getPathInfo        returns   a String  decoded by the web container  specifying extra path information that comes after the servlet path but before the query string in the request URL  or null if the URL does not have any extra path information  getRequestURI       returns   a String containing the part of the URL from the protocol name up to the query string

User · Answer

getPathInfo   gives the extra path information after the URI  used to access your Servlet  where as getRequestURI   gives the complete URI   I would have thought they would be different  given a Servlet must be configured with its own URI pattern in the first place  I don t think I ve ever served a Servlet from root       For example if Servlet  Foo  is mapped to URI   foo  then I would have thought the URI       foo path to resource   Would result in   RequestURI    foo path to resource   and  PathInfo    path to resource

[java] What's the difference between getRequestURI and getPathInfo methods in HttpServletRequest?

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