I have just been studying the specs trying to get a better understanding of the J2EE architecture. On page 44 of the Java Servlet Specification Version 2.2, it states:
A special directory exists within the application hierarchy named "WEB-INF". This directory
contains all things related to the application that aren’t in the document root of the application. It is
important to note that the WEB-INF node is not part of the public document tree of the application.
No file contained in the WEB-INF directory may be served directly to a client.
For what it's worth...
Earl
At 22:13 6/26/00 +0200, Karl Avedal wrote:
Hello Kevin,
The issue here is that we don't quite see where the specification says that
the WEB-INF library is accessible through getResource().
However, certain servers support it and we are making sure that this issue
is worked out in the JSP/Servlet specification expert group in which we
participate. What the specification currently says about resources is this
(section 4.4):
Resources
The ServletContext interface allows direct access to the static document
hierarchy of content
documents, such as HTML, GIF, and JPEG files, that are part of the web
application via the
following methods of the ServletContext interface:
* getResource
* getResourceAsStream
What it says is that the static document hierarchy is accesbile through
getResource(), it does not say anything about using getResource() to access
things in the WEB-INF directory, which although residing under the
web-application root is a special kind of directory that is not part of the
actual document hiearchy (defined in 9.4).
However, since Tomcat and others have decided to allow this, and obviously
Struts is using it, it might be written in the specification that access to
WEB-INF is indeed going to be possible, but the final word on this has not
been said yet.
If the expert group decides that the behaviour is going to be like Tomcat
does it, we will turn it on in a second.
Perhaps we'll even allow it just for Struts since people are bound to have
problems with it otherwise, but I hope you see our point too.
We do want to follow the specification by the word. It's our only guarantee
of real portability. If we start adopting our product to other products
instead of to the specification we're on very thin ice, and if the product
we're adopting to is adopting itself to the specification later, we're
lost.
Regards,
Karl Avedal
Kevin Duffey wrote:
> Thats the one. action.xml can't reside in WEB-INF in Orion just
> yet..hopefully soon they will remedy this problem.
>
> >
> > Hello again,
> > >
> > > > i just tried to get the example from "Struts-Framwork" to
> > work with orion.
> > > > has anyone get this to work?
> >
> > whoow!! now i got it work out of the box (the last nightly build
> > 20000625)!
> >
> > i have deployed in following directory structure:
> > /opt/orion
> > +- struts
> > +- struts-example
> >
> > server.xml:
Earl Marwil
SCIENTECH, Inc.
1690 International Way
Idaho Falls, ID 83402
208.525.3717
