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NetBeans 6.5 (and 6.7M2) produce a fatal error on the all views except the XML view for web.xml files that a servlet-mapping element which contains multiple url-pattern child elements. This is despite the fact that the servlet 2.5 specification and DTD both allow this cardinality and check and validate XML actions both succeed. Overall it would appear that the web.xml views have not kept up with the spec and fall flat on their face for this use case. This is unfortunate as producing one servlet-mapping element per url-pattern is verbose and hard to read by comparison, so overall I'll keep my web.xml readable and have to forgo nice web.xml browsing features NetBeans would otherwise have provided.
Yes, I can reproduce. I am attaching a web.xml file that reproduces this issue. The problem is that multiple url-pattern elements are not handled at the level of the NetBeans deployment descriptor API. There is also a corresponding TODO comment in j2ee.dd/src/org/netbeans/modules/j2ee/dd/impl/resources/web-app_2_5.xsd. I thing this was not easy to fix but I am not sure why - Erno, do you recall? Was it because it was hard to do in a backward compatible way, so that the org.netbeans.modules.j2ee.dd.api classes remain compatible? Thanks.
Created attachment 78546 [details] web.xml which reproduces this issue
That may have been the reason, and/or that s2b doesn't support this. I'll try to search for more details.
Tomas, can you please look at this? Jess, so would you normally use the graphical editor for web.xml? How useful is it to you (or would be, if this issue was fixed), compared to the plain text editor? Thanks.
I normally hand-edit web.xml as text. The graphical editor is just a nice to have item for browsing. In any case, however, the editor shouldn't claim that a valid web.xml is invalid (and worse yet has "fatal errors"!) simply because it is not up to the task of dealing with it. Doing so engenders unnecessary confusion and causes the user to question both their web.xml and the reliability of NetBeans.
In fact, this will be very hard to fix and right now I have no idea what the correct fix is.
Could you at least stop blaming the web.xml and claiming that it has "fatal errors" and instead say something to indicate that the web.xml is too sophisticated for the current graphic editor functionality? Or just automatically drop the graphical editor tabs/panes in this situation? Telling the user their web.xml is in error when the editor itself is in error is my main complaint.
A possible fix of this issue could be (not tested): - create a new interface ServletMapping25 (extends ServletMapping) with getter and setter for String[] urlPatterns - implement this interface for web.xml 2.5 - in MDD file - map DTD property url-pattern to urlPatterns and create getter/setter for "old" String urlPattern (they should delegate to the new methods and print warning to console) This solution should be backward compatible so no existing client should stop working. Unfortunately, mapping "url-pattern" to "urlPatterns" in MDD file does not work for me (possible bug in schema2beans module?).
Other solution (may be not) is writing some <user-code> element to mdd file (implement getUrlPatterns(), serUrlPatterns() methods)
I don't think so, Milane - one needs to ensure that these methods are called (so the mapping between url-pattern and getUrlPatterns() is still needed).
I cannot find a way to modify mdd file. One solution I see is to prepare the ServletMapping bean ahead (e.g. in resources package). Then, after bean generation replace the generated ServletMapping version with this one. It could be done in build.xml.
Or, as Tomas suggested, apply a patch on the generated file as a part of the build.
re. "mapping "url-pattern" to "urlPatterns" in MDD file does not work" - how would you do that? I'm getting familiar with DD API module and was curious how would you describe it in MDD file? I would expect meta-property to have an attribute like "field-name" via which you could override default name but I have not found anything like that. Attached patch seems to do half the job (there is one more TODO item to fix in XSD and UI for editting URLs needs to be enhanced or disabled otherwise it may clobber changes done by hand).
Created attachment 80555 [details] a patch
> re. "mapping "url-pattern" to "urlPatterns" in MDD file does not work" - how would you do that? I tried to do this: ----- >% ----- <meta-property> <dtd-name>url-pattern</dtd-name> <bean-name>UrlPatterns</bean-name> </meta-property> ----- >% ----- But now I see that's incorrect (I overlooked that dtd-name cannot be specified for meta-property). > Attached patch seems to do half the job (there is one more TODO item to fix in XSD and UI for editting URLs needs to be > enhanced or disabled otherwise it may clobber changes done by hand). Yes, I would prefer to enhance Web XML multiview if possible. I will look at it and try to fix it. Thanks for the patch, Davide!
FYI I filed issue #163396 for filter mappings.
Fixed, please verify if possible. Thanks. http://hg.netbeans.org/web-main/rev/c11933ffed15
Integrated into 'main-golden', will be available in build *200904231401* on http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/nightly/ (upload may still be in progress) Changeset: http://hg.netbeans.org/main-golden/rev/c11933ffed15 User: Tomas Mysik <tmysik@netbeans.org> Log: #160049: Multiple url-pattern elements within a servlet-mapping element declared invalid
Tomas, I think something similar needs to be done also for "filter-name" - search XSD for TODO comment.
Davide, do you mean this issue #163396?
Yeap, I overlooked you've created separate issue for that. Thanks.