Servlet Filters not following filter mapping in web.xml

Question

Hi Experts,
I have two Servlet filters SetCharacterEncodingFilter and LASBackOfficeAuthFilter which are mapped in such a way that SetCharacterEncodingFilter gets called before LASBackOfficeAuthFilter(This is done in web.xml using filter mapping).
I have code in SetCharacterEncodingFilter init() method to read and store the few parameters from a table , it also creates a new thread to montior db changes in these paremeters . LASBackOfficeAuthFilter reads a those parameters set after SetCharacterEncodingFilter initialization. This is failing in Weblogic Version: 10.3.2.0 because the LASBackOfficeAuthFilter init method gets called before SetCharacterEncodingFilter init method.
This is filter mapping order is working fine In Web Sphere and Tomcat 6 .
The web.xml filter mapping is given below .
     <filter>
          <filter-name>LASBackOfficeAuthFilter</filter-name>
          <display-name>Scheduler Authentication Filter</display-name>
          <filter-class>com.scheduler.servlet.backoffice.LASBackOfficeAuthFilter</filter-class>
          <!-- parameters specifying BackOffice servlet path translation -->
          <init-param>
               <param-name>PathLogin</param-name>
               <param-value>/login</param-value>
          </init-param>
          <init-param>
               <param-name>PathLogout</param-name>
               <param-value>/logout</param-value>
          </init-param>
          <init-param>
               <param-name>PathNotifications</param-name>
               <param-value>/secure/notifications</param-value>
          </init-param>
          <init-param>
               <param-name>PathSchedulerActions</param-name>
               <param-value>/secure/schedactions</param-value>
          </init-param>
          <init-param>
               <param-name>PathPing</param-name>
               <param-value>/secure/ping</param-value>
          </init-param>
     </filter>
     <!--
          this filter sets character encoding and mimetype for requests and
          responses
     -->
     <filter>
          <filter-name>SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name>
          <display-name>Scheduler Character Encoding Filter</display-name>
          <filter-class>com.scheduler.servlet.backoffice.SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
     </filter>
     <!-- correlate servlets and filters -->
     <filter-mapping>
          <filter-name>SetCharacterEncodingFilter</filter-name>
          <servlet-name>LASBackOfficeServlet</servlet-name>
     </filter-mapping>
     <filter-mapping>
          <filter-name>LASBackOfficeAuthFilter</filter-name>
          <servlet-name>LASBackOfficeServlet</servlet-name>
     </filter-mapping>
Any help on this would be very much appreciated .
Regards
Dinesh

Answer 1

No, regular expressions are not supported. You can specify the mapping with extensions, or with paths, not at the same time in the same mapping specification. However, you can specify two servlet mappings, one with extension, and one with path.
The exact wording from the spec (2.4) is as follows:
In the Web application deployment descriptor, the following syntax is used to define
mappings:
• A string beginning with a ‘/’ character and ending with a ‘/*’ suffix is used
for path mapping.
• A string beginning with a ‘*.’ prefix is used as an extension mapping.
• A string containing only the ’/’ character indicates the "default" servlet of
the application. In this case the servlet path is the request URI minus the context
path and the path info is null.
• All other strings are used for exact matches only.