The Resources Component

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Resources element represents all the resources available to the web application. This includes classes, JAR files, HTML, JSPs and any other files that contribute to the web application. Implementations are provided to use directories, JAR files and WARs as the source of these resources and the resources implementation may be extended to provide support for files stored in other forms such as in a database or a versioned repository.

Resources are cached by default.

Note: Running a webapp with non-filesystem based Resources implementations is only possible when the webapp does not rely on direct filesystem access to its own resources, and uses the methods in the ServletContext interface to access them.

A Resources element MAY be nested inside a Context component. If it is not included, a default filesystem based Resources will be created automatically, which is sufficient for most requirements.

Attributes

Common Attributes

All implementations of Resources support the following attributes:

Attribute Description
allowLinking

If the value of this flag is true, symlinks will be allowed inside the web application, pointing to resources outside the web application base path. If not specified, the default value of the flag is false.

NOTE: This flag MUST NOT be set to true on the Windows platform (or any other OS which does not have a case sensitive filesystem), as it will disable case sensitivity checks, allowing JSP source code disclosure, among other security problems.

cacheMaxSize

The maximum size of the static resource cache in kilobytes. If not specified, the default value is 10240 (10 megabytes). This value may be changed while the web application is running (e.g. via JMX). If the cache is using more memory than the new limit the cache will attempt to reduce in size over time to meet the new limit. If necessary, cacheObjectMaxSize will be reduced to ensure that it is no larger than cacheMaxSize/20.

cacheObjectMaxSize

Maximum size of the static resource that will be placed in the cache. If not specified, the default value is 512 (512 kilobytes). If this value is greater than cacheMaxSize/20 it will be reduced to cacheMaxSize/20. This value may be changed while the web application is running (e.g. via JMX).

cacheTtl

The amount of time in milliseconds between the revalidation of cache entries. If not specified, the default value is 5000 (5 seconds). This value may be changed while the web application is running (e.g. via JMX). When a resource is cached it will inherit the TTL in force at the time it was cached and retain that TTL until the resource is evicted from the cache regardless of any subsequent changes that may be made to this attribute.

cachingAllowed

If the value of this flag is true, the cache for static resources will be used. If not specified, the default value of the flag is true. This value may be changed while the web application is running (e.g. via JMX). When the cache is disabled any resources currently in the cache are cleared from the cache.

className

Java class name of the implementation to use. This class must implement the org.apache.catalina.WebResourceRoot interface. If not specified, the standard value (defined below) will be used.

trackLockedFiles

Controls whether the track locked files feature is enabled. If enabled, all calls to methods that return objects that lock a file and need to be closed to release that lock (e.g. ServletContext.getResourceAsStream()) will perform a number of additional tasks.

  • The stack trace at the point where the method was called will be recorded and associated with the returned object.
  • The returned object will be wrapped so that the point where close() (or equivalent) is called to release the resources can be detected. Tracking of the object will cease once the resources have been released.
  • All remaining locked resources on web application shutdown will be logged and then closed.

If not specified, the default value of false will be used.

Standard Implementation

The standard implementation of Resources is org.apache.catalina.webresources.StandardRoot. It does not support any additional attributes.

Nested Components

A web application's main resources are defined by the docBase defined for the Context. Additional resources may be made available to the web application by defining one or more nested components.

PreResources

PreResources are searched before the main resources. They will be searched in the order they are defined. To configure PreResources, nest a <PreResources> element inside the <Resources> element with the following attributes:

Attribute Description
base

Identifies where the resources to be used are located. This attribute is required by the org.apache.catalina.WebResourceSet implementations provided by Tomcat and should specify the absolute path to the file, directory or JAR where the resources are located. Custom implementations may not require it.

className

Java class name of the implementation to use. This class must implement the org.apache.catalina.WebResourceSet interface. Tomcat provides three standard implementations: org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet, org.apache.catalina.webresources.FileResourceSet and org.apache.catalina.webresources.JarResourceSet. Custom implementations may also be used.

internalPath

Identifies the path within the base where the resources are to be found. This is typically only used with JAR files when the resources are not located at the root of the JAR as is the case with resource JARs. This attribute is required by the org.apache.catalina.WebResourceSet implementations provided by Tomcat and must start with '/'. Custom implementations may not require it. If not specified, the default value '/' will be used.

readOnly

If true, resources within this resource set may not be deleted, created or modified. For instance of org.apache.catalina.webresources.JarResourceSet, this attribute is hard-coded to true and may not be changed. For instances of org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet and org.apache.catalina.webresources.FileResourceSet the default value of this attribute is false.

webAppMount

Identifies the path within the web application that these resources will be made available. For the org.apache.catalina.WebResourceSet implementations provided by Tomcat, this attribute is required and must start with '/'. Custom implementations may not require it. If not specified, the default value of '/' will be used.

JAR resources

JarResources are searched after the main resources but before the PostResources. They will be searched in the order they are defined. To configure JarResources, nest a <JarResources> element inside the <Resources> element. The configuration attributes are the same as for PreResources.

During web application start, the JAR scanning process checks scanned JARs for content under /META-INF/resources. Where found, this static content is added to the JarResources.

Post-resources

PostResources are searched after the resource JARs. They will be searched in the order they are defined. To configure PostResources, nest a <PostResources> element inside the <Resources> element. The configuration attributes are the same as for PreResources.

Ordering

In addition to the sets of resources described above, the standard implementation also maintains ClassResources which represent the classes contained in the JAR files mapped to /WEB-INF/classes. This allows other components to search for classes with a single call rather than one call to search /WEB-INF/classes followed by another to search the JARs in /WEB-INF/lib. The ClassResources are populated from the JARs mapped to /WEB-INF/lib when the web application starts.

Therefore, the complete search order is:

  • PreResources
  • MainResources
  • ClassResources
  • JarResources
  • PostResources

The population of ClassResources and JarResources at web application start means that care needs to be taken to add JAR based resources correctly to obtain the desired behaviour. Consider the following example:

<Resources>
  <PostResources base="D:\Projects\external\classes"
                 className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet"
                 webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes"/>
  <PostResources base="D:\Projects\lib\library1.jar"
                 className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.FileResourceSet"
                 webAppMount="/WEB-INF/lib/library1.jar"/>
</Resources>

Since both resources are PostResources, it might be expected that D:\Projects\external\classes will be searched for classes before D:\Projects\lib\library1.jar. However, by adding the JAR using a FileResourceSet, the JAR is mapped to /WEB-INF/lib and will be processed at application start along with the other JARs in /WEB-INF/lib. The classes from the JAR file will be added to the ClassResources which means they will be searched before the classes from D:\Projects\external\classes. If the desired behaviour is that D:\Projects\external\classes is searched before D:\Projects\lib\library1.jar then a slightly different configuration is required:

<Resources>
  <PostResources base="D:\Projects\external\classes"
                 className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet"
                 webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes"/>
  <PostResources base="D:\Projects\lib\library1.jar"
                 className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.JarResourceSet"
                 webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes"/>
</Resources>

In short, the JAR file should be added as a JarResourceSet mapped to /WEB-INF/classes rather than using a FileResourceSet mapped to /WEB-INF/lib.

Special Features

No special features are associated with a Resources element.

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