Package com.isomorphic.servlet

Class URIRegexFilter

java.lang.Object
com.isomorphic.servlet.BaseFilter
com.isomorphic.servlet.URIRegexFilter
All Implemented Interfaces:
jakarta.servlet.Filter
public class URIRegexFilter extends com.isomorphic.servlet.BaseFilter
Most servlet containers do not allow filter registration based on Regex rules. This filter rectifies the problem. To use, register the filter to intercept /* or whatever slice of the URI space you want and provide a rules file either in web.xml (see the doc for the rules init-param) or in a seprate file referenced in web.xml via the rulesFile init-param.

Rules take the following form: <action>:<regular expression>

Where <action> is one of: block, ignore, match and the regular expression is one that is acceptable to the Java Pattern class. Rules are evaluated in the order they appear, and the first match wins. If no rules match, the outcome is determined by the value of defaultAction. Once the action is determined, one of the following methods is called:

  • matchedRule() - default imlementation calls through to one of the next three methods. This signature provides access to the RegexRules object.
  • block() - default implementation logs an INFO level message about the URL being blocked, and returns HTTP code 404 to the client - effectively disallowing access.
  • match() - default implementation has empty body - you would typically override this to do whatever your filter needs to do.
  • ignore() - default implementation calls chain.doFilter() - effectively passing through the request to the next filter/servlet in the chain.

  • Field Summary

    Fields
    Modifier and Type
    Field
    Description
    String
    matchURI
    Controls the URI string against which matchese are performed.
    protected List
    rules
    You can specify the set of rules governing this filter as an init-param in web.xml.
    String
    rulesFile
    If specified, The filter uses the regex rules defined in this file.
    int
    uriCacheSize
    Specifies the size of the URICache.
    protected boolean
    useURICache
    This parameter controls whether the URICache is enabled or not.

  • Method Summary

    Modifier and Type
    Method
    Description
    void
    matchedRule(com.isomorphic.util.RegexRule rule, jakarta.servlet.ServletRequest req, jakarta.servlet.ServletResponse res, jakarta.servlet.FilterChain chain)
    End user override point that provides the RegexRule object which allows you to inspect the action of the rule and the rule itself.

  • Field Details

    • useURICache

      protected boolean useURICache
      This parameter controls whether the URICache is enabled or not.

      If this filter users regular expressions via the rulesFile, the URI Cache will cache the result of the application of relevant rules for any given URI. The URI Cache drastically speeds up subsequent rule applications at the cost of memory.

      Note: the cache is automatically disabled if there are no rules to apply (rulesFile is unset this typically means the user is managing the mappings through web.xml).

      Performance: The URI cache is an LRU Map. If you're using this filter on a large-scale site with a lot of unique URIs, you may want to tune its size via the uriCacheSize parameter to balance between memory usage and performance. Note that the memory usage problem can be exacerbated by crawlers if there are a log of directly-accessible unique URIs. Another thing you can do to help performance is reorder the regex rules in the config file to have the most-used/most-encompassing ones appear first to reduce the total number of regexes required per URI.

      See Also:

    • uriCacheSize

      public int uriCacheSize
      Specifies the size of the URICache. Note that each filter definition will have its own URICache.

    • matchURI

      public String matchURI
      Controls the URI string against which matchese are performed. Valid values are "current" for the current requestURI and "initial" for the initial request URI. Default is "current".

    • rulesFile

      public String rulesFile
      If specified, The filter uses the regex rules defined in this file. Alternatively you can use rules to specify the rules in web.xml.

      The format of the rulesFile is a list of regular expressions in a JSON array, like this: 

       var rules = [
    "block:/bar/.*",
    "ignore:/foo/.*",
    "match:.*",
 ];
      Note: The rulesFile path is treated as relative to webRoot.
      See Also:

    • rules

      protected List rules
      You can specify the set of rules governing this filter as an init-param in web.xml. The name of the param is rules and the value is a newline delimited list of rules. For example: 
       <filter>
   <filter-name>CacheFilter</filter-name>
   <filter-class>com.isomorphic.servlet.CacheFilter</filter-class>
   <init-param>
       <param-name>rules</param-name>
       <param-value>
           block:/foo
           match:zoo/bar
           ignore:/xxx
       </param-value>
   </init-param>
 </filter>
      See Also:

  • Method Details

    • matchedRule

      public void matchedRule(com.isomorphic.util.RegexRule rule, jakarta.servlet.ServletRequest req, jakarta.servlet.ServletResponse res, jakarta.servlet.FilterChain chain) throws jakarta.servlet.ServletException, IOException
      End user override point that provides the RegexRule object which allows you to inspect the action of the rule and the rule itself.
      Throws:
      jakarta.servlet.ServletException
      IOException