[SOLVED] Spring Web Flow request mappings

Spring Web Flow request mappings

I am adding Spring Web Flow 2 to a very large existing web application that does not currently use Spring MVC or Web Flow. My task is to have the Web Flow triggered by going to mySite.com/flows, and I am having difficulties. My approach was to set up the DispatcherServlet with mapping of /flows/* and map Web Flow to /flows. Here is my web.xml where the DispatcherServlet is configured:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>flow</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/spring/flowContext.xml</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>flow</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/flows/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

I have tried several methods to get the Web Flow to map to /flows. My first try was to use a flow-registry with base-path setting:

<webflow:flow-registry id="flowRegistry" flow-builder-services="flowBuilderServices" base-path="/WEB-INF/app/flows">
    <webflow:flow-location-pattern value="**/*-flow.xml" />
</webflow:flow-registry>

My understanding is that this will take the folder structure inside of the /WEB-INF/app/flows to create the request mapping. My first test was to add my flow, booking-flow.xml inside a subfolder called booking (/WEB-INF/app/flows/booking). And, great! - it worked as expected. I was able to access the flow from mySite.com/flows/booking. OK, but I don't want /booking in the URL, so I moved the booking-flow.xml out of the booking folder, and straight into WEB-INF/app/flows and expected that to work for me, but it did not - I don't think the flow mapped at all.

Does anyone know how I can map a flow to the root of the DispatcherServlet mapping, or is there a better way to approach this? I don't want the DispatcherServlet to handle any requests outside of /flows in my application. Is it just me, or is there very little documentation available on Spring Web Flow?

Thanks!

Solution

You can use SimpleUrlHandlerMapping this way to map your flow to mySite.com/flows

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
    <property name="mappings" value="flows=flowController" />
</bean>

<bean id="flowController" class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.FlowController">
    <property name="flowExecutor" ref="flowExecutor" />
</bean>

<webflow:flow-executor id="flowExecutor" flow-registry="flowRegistry">
</webflow:flow-executor>

<webflow:flow-registry id="flowRegistry" flow-builder-services="flowBuilderServices" base-path="/WEB-INF/app/flows">    
    <webflow:flow-location path="booking-flow.xml" id="flows"/>
</webflow:flow-registry>