This is a question for Tomcat experts before I get started implementing
a new feature.
Let's say I'm embedding Tomcat to serve static files. At the time of
creation I know that certain paths, such as `foo/bar.txt`, should
redirect to other paths, such as `some/other.txt`. What's the best way
to configure Tomcat to do those redirects? I'm comfortable with
extending the source code.
Here are a couple of ideas that come to mind:
* I could create a redirect servlet and map different instances of it
to different targets in the context when I configure everything. But
in Tomcat's routing engine, is the most efficient way to do things?
(I assume that the servlet mappings can be placed "over" the default
servlet's path space, that is, cherry-pick paths for redirection,
falling back to the default file-serving servlet for non-redirect
paths.)
* I thought of patching into the default file servlet, overriding
`org.apache.catalina.WebResource`, and creating virtual
`RedirectResource` resources that don't correspond to any physical
file. However it's not obvious to me where I would create a
redirect. Maybe throw some redirect exception inside
`WebResource.getInputStream()`? (This is probably not correct. I'm
just brainstorming. The idea is sound if I knew where to put it.)
* Should I install a configured rewrite valve when I'm setting up
embedded Tomcat?
* Is there some other routing logic in Tomcat I could tap into most
efficiently, providing a known set of redirects?
Thanks for any guidance. I'm want to figure out the best way to attack
this before getting very deep in an implementation.
Garret
