[SOLVED] Determine if JSF request is user initiated and ignore static content requests

Determine if JSF request is user initiated and ignore static content requests

I want to log all user JSF requests (including AJAX), to do this I have implemented an @Observer for the @RequestScoped

This works however it also fires for all static content GET requests including CSS/JS/Images etc. which I do not want to log.

Is there a convenient way to determine if the request was initiated from the user and ignore static file GET's? I thought of checking the requested files extension but some of the static files seem to end with .xhtml so that won't work

I am using Omnifaces if that helps (JSF 2.3 / CDI)

public void logRequest(@Observes @Initialized(RequestScoped.class) ServletRequest payload) {
    // logging request here
}

Solution

Provided that you're handling all resources via the therefor provided JSF components such as <h:outputScript>, <h:outputStylesheet> and <h:graphicImage>, then simply check if the request path starts with ResourceHandler.RESOURCE_IDENTIFIER.

public void logRequest(@Observes @Initialized(RequestScoped.class) ServletRequest payload) {
    HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) payload;

    if (request.getRequestURI().startsWith(request.getContextPath() + ResourceHandler.RESOURCE_IDENTIFIER + "/")) {
        return; // It's a JSF resource request.
    }

    // Log request here.
}

I am using Omnifaces if that helps (JSF 2.3 / CDI)

Yes, that definitely helps. There's since OmniFaces version 2.0 already a helper method which does exactly that, hereby reducing the boilerplate. It's the Servlets#isFacesResourceRequest():

public void logRequest(@Observes @Initialized(RequestScoped.class) ServletRequest payload) {
    HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) payload;

    if (Servlets.isFacesResourceRequest(request)) {
        return; // It's a JSF resource request.
    }

    // Log request here.
}