Struts 2.2.3 jasper ImageServlet problem

[V. Oliver Smith]

I am using the jasper reports plugin for Struts 2.2.3 and whenever I try to generate a HTML formatted report, all the images are broken. What appears to be the problem is the ImageServlet class that responds to image requests is not being called. Here is the relevant code:

web.xml
<servlet>
<servlet-name>ImageServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>net.sf.jasperreports.j2ee.servlets.ImageServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>ImageServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/servlets/image</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Struts.xml
<result name="html" type="jasper">
.
.
<param name="imageServletUrl">/servlets/image?image=</param>
</result>

This a sample line from the broken image html report that was displayed

<td><img alt="" src="/toga_reports/servlets/image?image=px" style="width: 21px; height: 1px;"/></td>

The reason why I believe the ImageServlet isn't being called is I added the .java source code for that class in Eclipse and set a breakpoint at the beginning of the service method. When the code ran, the breakpoint was never reached.

Does anyone understand why the ImageServlet isn't being called based on my configuation? Any help is GREATLY appreciated

[V. Oliver Smith]

After much labor, I figured out what the issue was. The problem is the StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter that is configured in web.xml intercepts every URL request made to my app. In the case of the ImageServlet, since it was configured in web.xml as well, this is undesired behavior as it would never be called.

The solution was to add the following in my struts.xml file:

<constant name="struts.action.excludePattern" value="/servlets/image*"/>

This causes the Struts Filter Dispatcher class to ignore URLs that match the pattern and allows the ImageServlet to handle those requests instead.