There seem to be some servlet mapping issues with Glassfish V3.0.1.
To summarize, the following outlines what the servlet mapping logic should do:-
- The <url-pattern> as below matches the input url and if there is a match, passes the url to the designated servlet (in this case the faces servlet).
- The url parts that match are stripped out, so that for extension mapping e.g. “*.jsf” pattern the “.jsf” is removed, and for path mapping e.g. “/faces/*” pattern the /faces subdirectory is removed.
- The javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX as below is applied to the result as a file type if one is not present, to give an actual file to be searched for. This is passed to the faces servlet for processing.
I tried the same combination in web.xml that I had used previously on Glassfish V2.1 with ICEfaces:-
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.jsf</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<context-param>
<param-name>javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX</param-name>
<param-value>.jsf</param-value>
</context-param>
The actual file type was also .jsf (index.jsf in this case)
This gave rise to the following intermittent error when run – it would run once or twice and then blow up:-
url: http://localhost/PrimeTest1/index.jsf
error: javax.servlet.ServletException: PWC1232: Exceeded maximum depth for nested request dispatches: 20
Changing the actual file type and the above javax.faces.DEFAULT_SUFFIX value to .xhtml worked correctly in every case.
This error occurred both with a simple Primefaces test page:-
<html xmlns=’http://www.w3c.org/1999/xhtml’
xmlns:f=’http://java.sun.com/jsf/core’
xmlns:h=’http://java.sun.com/jsf/html’
xmlns:p=’http://primefaces.prime.com.tr/ui’>
<h:head> </h:head>
<h:body>
<p:editor />
</h:body>
</html>
and also with a simple JSF page in a non Primefaces JSF 2 faceted eclipse web project:-
<html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<title>Test Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
Test page body
</body>
</html>
It was therefore clear that the error was not Primefaces related, but appeared to be recursion caused by a servlet mapping issue. This post on the Glassfish Forums reported the issue – there was some discussion but no resolution, and I don’t think a bug has been raised. This post also reported the same issue. Whilst I found a number of other posts too with what seemed like a related issue, there appeared to be no clear conclusion on any of them re the nature of the problem or a fix for it. I tried other combinations such as path mapping using “/faces/*” for the url pattern, “.jsf” for the default suffix, and “http://localhost/PrimeTest1/faces/index.jsf” for the url, but in this case the above error did not occur but a blank page was displayed. On examining the source for the page, it turned out to be the original page source i.e. it had not passed through the faces servlet.
My conclusion is that the servlet mapping/url pattern handling for Glassfish V3.0.1 has some issues, the precise nature of which is not clear. My solution is to use “.xhtml” for the actual filetypes and for the default suffix, and extension mapping using “*.jsf” for the url pattern – this combination works fine with no issues.
