Servlet URL parameters

Hi, you know on digg.com when you click on an article "This is an article" it links to a url in the form digg.com/this_is_an_article. Is this possible to do with Servlets? Seems like the parameter is being passed as part of the url but not using the typical ?story=this_is_an_article. I tried google but not sure what it's called.

Thanks.

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Bart Stanz wrote:Is this possible to do with Servlets?

Of course. There are methods on the HttpServletRequest instance to obtain every part of the URL.

Be sure that your servlet mapping is correctly mapped to the prefix you want to use.

Bart Stanz wrote:Hi, you know on digg.com when you click on an article "This is an article" it links to a url in the form digg.com/this_is_an_article. Is this possible to do with Servlets? Seems like the parameter is being passed as part of the url but not using the typical ?story=this_is_an_article. I tried google but not sure what it's called.

Thanks.

This is called URL rewriting or friendly URLs. In servlet containers like tomcat it can be done with UrlRewriteFilter.
check out http://www.theserverside.com/blogs/thread.tss?thread_id=47588

If you are using a web framework like struts 2, it should let you swap out the ActionMapper for one that uses friendly URLs. If you are doing straight servlets, you will have to do it yourself with URLRewriteFilter.

Thanks Bear, I fixed the ambiguity in the title.

Tim: Thanks, I think this is what I am looking for. Cheers!

-Bart

Note that re-writing is not necessary. The servlets can respond directly if mapped and written correctly to accept REST-style URLs.

Re-writing is only necessary to retro-fit friendly URLs into "non-friendly" URLs when necessary.

Bear: you're right, in my case I didn't really need to use rewriting. It's actually very simple (excuse my newbiness).

In my case this worked out fine:

I made a servlet mapping with url-patter like this:
<url-pattern>/article/*</url-pattern>

and then in the servlet I put this code:

String servletPath = request.getPathInfo();

System.out.println(servletPath);

So if the URL was www.site.com/article/this_is_some_article, request.getPathInfo(); would return /this_is_some_article.

Thanks guys,

Bart