Relative paths for images upset by forwarding requests

Question

Hello World.
          I am using a web app deployed in Weblogic 5.1 with service pack 8.
          I have hit a problem which puzzles me. When I forward a request from
          one JSP to another (say from A to B) the web server seems to take the
          URLs of the images on the served file (B) relative to the path on the
          calling file (A). Here's a detailed explanation...
          Suppose I have a the web app structured as follow
          /oddApp/launch/A.jsp
          /oddApp/B.jsp
          /oddApp/images/tick.gif
          Page A simply stores its request URI and forwards its request to page B
          <jsp:forward page="/B.jsp" />
          Page B displays its requestURI, contextPath and servletPath. It also
          attempts
          to show three images
          <img src="images/tick.gif">
          <img src="../images/tick.gif">
          <img src="/images/tick.gif">
          When I invoke page B directly, the first image is shown, the others are not.
          When I invoke page A, it forwards to B and the second image is shown, the
          others are not.
          In each case the URI, contextPath and servletPath are correctly displayed
          with regard to page B.
          URI = [oddApp/B.jsp]
          contextPath = [oddApp]
          servletPath = [B.jsp]
          The URI in A.jsp is also correct (i.e. /oddApp/launch/A.jsp).
          The search for the images seems to be relative to the original URI (i.e. not
          the URI used to forward), which strikes me as daft. It means that page B
          must be aware of where it is being called from. It is perfectly plausible
          that
          relative paths which suit when called from one location are incorrect when
          called from another.
          I had thought that including the leadling slash (as shown as the third
          image)
          would cause the search relative to the document root (/oddApp/), but this
          appears not to be the case. The search is done relative to the root of the
          server not the web app.
          Adding jsp mappings in the deployment descriptor of the web app does not
          help (I had thought it a long shot anyway).
          Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
          PHiL
          

Answer 1

i face the same problem (WinNT, WLS6.0): my wep app has a contextRoot " root " which makes it react to the URL: http://host:port/root /: it is this folder which will be used as a basis by the Web server But in the jps I use a relative URL for images: / images/toto.gif : it works very well when I deploy my jsp out of a Web-app by setting a document.root to the weblogic web server.On the other hand, once deployed in a Web-app, images are not found because the default path of the browser is http://host:port, without the context root of the Web-app! In other words, my war has images/*.gif in its root but when /images/toto.gif is resolved in a jsp, as the relative URL is not prefixed by my context-root, the image is not search in the war! actually, if I type http://host:port/root/toto.gif, my image appearsany clues? an alias on the web server? a setting in web.xml/application.xml and their weblogic equivalent files?