What can you do:

Use regular expressions to do url rewriting in java:

Setup

1. Copy the library into your project under `WEB-INF/lib/` 2. Add the `URLRewrite` filter into your `WEB-INF/web.xml`

	<filter>
		<filter-name>URLRewrite</filter-name>
		<filter-class>org.urlrewrite.URLRewrite</filter-class>
	</filter>
	<filter-mapping>
		<filter-name>URLRewrite</filter-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</filter-mapping>

3. Create the file: `WEB-INF/url-rewriting.xml` 4. Add your rules

Example `url-rewriting.xml`

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<url-rewriting>
	<rewrite from="/best/url$" to="/index.jsp?url=#{0}" />
	<rewrite from="/best/url/permanently$" to="/index.jsp?url=#{0}" status="301" />
</url-rewriting>

Where #{0} will refer to your current URL

Advanced examples `url-rewriting.xml`

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<url-rewriting>
	<rewrite from="/best/([^/]+)/$" to="/index.jsp?url=#{0}&mySelection=#{1}" />
&lt;rewrite from="/index.jsp$" to="/new/url" status="301" /&gt;
&lt;rewrite from="/new/url$" to="/index.jsp?nice-url=yes-it-worked" /&gt;

</url-rewriting>

More advanced examples `url-rewriting.xml`. Generate `to` in code

This is a strong feature because you can generate your own `new url` however you want: generate it using your database maybe.

You have to extend: org.urlrewrite.URLHandler and that's it. Using getResponse, getRequest you have access to HTTPServlet.*.

You can take a look at

• org.urlrewrite.DefaultURLHandler

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ? >
<url-rewriting>
	<rewrite from="/best/([^/]+)/$" handler="my.project.MyURLHandlerImplementation" />
	
	<rewrite from="/index.jsp$" to="/new/url" status="301" />
	<rewrite from="/new/url$" to="/index.jsp?nice-url=yes-it-worked" />
</url-rewriting>

Status codes

By default are considered only:

1. 301 - Permanent redirect
2. 302 - Found
3. 307 - Temporary redirect (since HTTP 1.1)

But you can use:

1. no status code and it will be default to 200
2. any other code like 404