Wiki source code of Short URLs

Last modified by Vincent Massol on 2024/03/27

version	line-number	content
19.4	1	{{box cssClass="floatinginfobox" title="Contents"}}
	2	{{toc/}}
	3	{{/box}}
14.1	4
19.4	5	This tutorial shows you how to tune your XWiki platform by replacing the default URL scheme with a shorter scheme.
15.1	6
14.1	7	{{info}}
	8	A short URL is an URL without the ##xwiki/bin/view## parts.
	9	{{/info}}
2.1	10
20.1	11	= I. Application name =
1.1	12
14.1	13	The ##/xwiki/## part of the URL is the application name. It identifies the application that should process the request, and it allows a container to host more than one application. To change it you must refer to your container's documentation and find how to map the context path of a web application. For example on Tomcat it's enough to simply deploy the XWiki webapp in the ##webapps## directory, in a sub directory named after the application name you wish to use (e.g. ##webapps/myappname##).
1.1	14
47.1	15	== Deploying as ROOT ==
	16
46.1	17	A special case is when deploying XWiki as the ROOT application, which actually allows the application name part to be empty, so an URL can take the form ##server.com/bin/view/Space/Document##.
43.1	18
46.1	19	Achieving this depends on the container, as there's no standard regarding the ROOT application (Refer to your container's documentation for more details).
	20
	21	Some examples:
51.1	22
46.1	23	* In Tomcat, with the default configuration, all it takes is to deploy the XWiki web application in ##webapps##, in a sub directory named ##ROOT## (i.e. ##webapps/ROOT##).
26.1	24	* In Jetty, with the default configuration, all it takes is to deploy the XWiki web application in ##webapps##, in a sub directory named ##root##. Note that if you're using the Standalone distribution (which packages Jetty and HSQLDB) then you'll also need to:
	25	** Remove the existing ##webapps/root## directory which contains a redirect Servlet that automatically redirects root URLs to the ##xwiki## context. You won't need that anymore.
	26	** Rename the existing ##webapps/xwiki## directory into ##webapps/root##.
	27	** Remove the ##jetty/contexts/xwiki.xml## file and thus keep only the ##jetty/contexts/root.xml## file. Otherwise you'll get a warning in the console.
10.2	28
47.2	29	In addition, starting with XWiki 6.2.8/6.4.3/7.0 you must tell XWiki that it's deployed as ROOT by setting the ##xwiki.webapppath## to empty in your ##xwiki.cfg## configuration file as in:
26.1	30
46.1	31	{{code language="none"}}
	32	xwiki.webapppath=
	33	{{/code}}
	34
	35	The reason is that XWiki cannot guess the webapp context from the URL in this case. This seemed to work on previous versions but it was actually leading to errors from time to time, depending on what URL was used when doing the first request on the XWiki instance.
	36
49.1	37	=== When using the XWiki Debian Package ===
	38
61.1	39	See [[Installation using Debian (.DEB) packages>>Documentation.AdminGuide.Installation.InstallationViaAPT.WebHome\|\|anchor="HXWikiasrootwebapp28shortURLs29"]].
49.1	40
20.1	41	= II. Servlet mapping name =
1.1	42
71.1	43	The second part is the hardest part to remove. It identifies the servlet that should process the page, which, for ##/bin/##, is the action servlet. Generically speaking, to get rid of ##/bin/##, you need to configure your system so that URLs matching ##/## are mapped to the Action Servlet (by default only ##/bin/## URLs are mapped to the Action Servlet).
1.1	44
70.1	45	However you need to be careful that the following prefixes do NOT go through the Action Servlet (see your ##web.xml## to check their current mappings):
43.1	46
29.1	47	* ##/resources/## and ##/skins/##: Statically served resources. These need to be served directly as static resources.
35.1	48	* ##/rest/*##: REST resources, served by the XWiki REST Servlet
29.1	49	* ##/redirect##: The XWiki Redirect Servlet used to redirect to the home page when no page is specified in the URL
1.1	50
38.1	51	There are various alternate to achieve this:
20.1	52
38.1	53	{{toc scope="local"/}}
	54
37.1	55	{{info}}
62.1	56	You might be tempted to configure just your XWiki's ##web.xml## file [[but this won't work>>Documentation.AdminGuide.ShortURLs.ShortURLsInvalid.WebHome]].
37.1	57	{{/info}}
	58
29.1	59	== UrlRewriteFilter ==
	60
82.1	61	{{warning}}
86.1	62	This approach requires a specific workaround configuration with Tomcat 9.x+ (the workaround was not needed with Tomcat 8.x) since Tomcat performs very early mapping of incoming requests before the ##URLRewriteFilter## has a chance to add the ##/bin## prefix. Thus the mapping is [[wrongly associated to the default Servlet instead of the XWiki Action Servlet>>https://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-19444?focusedCommentId=112420&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-112420]]. The workaround consists of the two actions below.
29.1	63
94.1	64	* Declare new Servlet mappings in ##web.xml##:(((
81.1	65	{{code language="xml"}}
	66	<servlet-mapping>
	67	<servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
	68	<url-pattern>/upload/*</url-pattern>
	69	</servlet-mapping>
94.1	70
	71	<!-- This is for the file upload from CKEditor to work, since it sends a POST action to the current page using the "/get/" path -->
	72	<servlet-mapping>
	73	<servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
	74	<url-pattern>/get/*</url-pattern>
	75	</servlet-mapping>
81.1	76	{{/code}}
85.1	77	)))
88.2	78	* Update the ##upload.js## content:
	79	** Do a backup of ##$XWIKI_WEBAPP/resources/uicomponents/widgets/upload.min.js##, then remove the original file
	80	** Edit the file ##$XWIKI_WEBAPP/resources/uicomponents/widgets/upload.js## and update the line {{code language="javascript"}}request.open('POST', this.formData.action);{{/code}} to:(((
87.1	81	{{code language="javascript"}}
88.1	82	request.open('POST', this.formData.action + '?form_token='+this.formData.additionalFields['form_token']
	83	+ '&xredirect=' + escape(this.formData.additionalFields['xredirect']));
85.1	84	{{/code}}
	85	)))
	86	{{/warning}}
84.1	87
81.1	88	"UrlRewriteFilter" is a [[framework offering a Servlet Filter>>http://www.tuckey.org/urlrewrite/]] allowing to rewrite URLs.
36.1	89
	90	Install steps:
43.1	91
73.2	92	1. [[Download the JAR>>https://search.maven.org/artifact/org.tuckey/urlrewritefilter]] and put it in ##WEB-INF/lib##
64.1	93	1. Edit your ##WEB-INF/web.xml## and add the ##<filter>## and ##<filter-mapping>## definitions [[as documented>>http://www.tuckey.org/urlrewrite/]]. Make sure to have them first so that they're executed before any other XWiki filter.
67.1	94	1. Drop the following content below in a file at ##WEB-INF/urlrewrite.xml##:(((
63.1	95	Note that this is just an example and you should tune it depending on what you wish to achieve. Its principle is very simple: it takes some URL format you wish to have and convert those URLs into the format that XWiki expects in input, and, in output, it does the opposite and converts the XWiki format into the format you wish to have.
	96
	97	The example below expects URLs without a ##/bin## and thus adds it so that XWiki has it when it processes URLs and in output, removes the ##/bin## so that generated URLs are without ##/bin##.
	98
14.1	99	{{code language="xml"}}
29.1	100	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	101	<!DOCTYPE urlrewrite PUBLIC "-//tuckey.org//DTD UrlRewrite 4.0//EN"
	102	"http://www.tuckey.org/res/dtds/urlrewrite4.0.dtd">
42.1	103	<urlrewrite decode-using="null">
29.1	104
	105	<rule>
	106	<note>
70.1	107	Ensure that URLs that must not be served by the Action Servlet are not modified.
29.1	108	</note>
83.1	109	<from>^/((authenticate\|bin\|resources\|skins\|asyncrenderer\|rest\|wiki\|jcaptcha\|webjars\|job)/(.*)\|robots\.txt)$</from>
29.1	110	<to type="forward" last="true">-</to>
	111	</rule>
	112
	113	<rule>
	114	<note>
	115	For all other URLs we prepend the "/bin/" prefix so that they get routed to the XWiki Action Servlet.
	116	</note>
	117	<from>^/(.*)$</from>
	118	<to type="forward">/bin/$1</to>
	119	</rule>
	120
32.1	121	<outbound-rule>
	122	<note>
48.1	123	Rewrite outbound URLs to remove the "/bin" part when there are two paths after it.
32.1	124	</note>
	125	<from>/bin/(.)/(.)$</from>
	126	<to>/$1/$2</to>
	127	</outbound-rule>
	128
48.1	129	<outbound-rule>
	130	<note>
	131	Rewrite outbound URLs to remove the "/bin" part when there's a single path after it.
	132	</note>
	133	<from>/bin/(.*)$</from>
	134	<to>/$1</to>
	135	</outbound-rule>
	136
	137	<outbound-rule>
	138	<note>
	139	Rewrite outbound URLs to remove the "/bin" part it's the last path.
	140	</note>
	141	<from>/bin$</from>
	142	<to>/</to>
	143	</outbound-rule>
	144
29.1	145	</urlrewrite>
	146	{{/code}}
36.1	147	)))
29.1	148
94.2	149	Note: for debugging of URL Rewrite filter, set the ##logLevel## parameter as described in https://tuckey.org/urlrewrite/manual/5.1/index.html#filterparams (using the value ##sysout:DEBUG##, the logs can be read in tomcat logs).
45.1	150
39.1	151	== Apache ==
16.1	152
39.1	153	Strategy:
43.1	154
73.1	155	* Tell Apache that ##/skins## and ##/resources## URLs are served statically so that they don't go through the Servlet container
	156	* Configure ##web.xml## so that ##/*## URLs go through the Action Servlet
39.1	157	* Tell XWiki to not generate URLs with ##bin## in the path
4.1	158
39.1	159	Configuration steps:
43.1	160
39.1	161	* Setup the following Apache configuration:(((
	162	{{code language="apache"}}
19.4	163	Alias /skins /usr/local/xwiki/skins
	164	Alias /resources /usr/local/xwiki/resources
19.1	165
34.1	166	RewriteEngine on
	167
	168	RewriteRule ^/+skins - [L]
	169	RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.gwtrpc$
	170	RewriteRule ^/+resources($\|/.*) - [L]
	171
89.1	172	## For some reason, the "/" end points does not work with tomcat, so the workaround is to rewrite it to /Main
	173	RewriteRule ^/*$ http://localhost:8080/Main/ [P,L]
	174	## For all other URLs, we go to tomcat
34.1	175	RewriteRule .* http://localhost:8080%{REQUEST_URI} [P,L]
	176	ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
	177	{{/code}}
39.1	178	)))
41.1	179	* Edit ##web.xml## and add:(((
39.1	180	{{code language="xml"}}
	181	<servlet-mapping>
	182	<servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
	183	<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	184	</servlet-mapping>
	185	{{/code}}
	186	)))
	187	* Add the following in ##xwiki.cfg## (empty value after the equal sign):(((
14.1	188	{{code language="none"}}
39.1	189	xwiki.defaultservletpath=
14.1	190	{{/code}}
43.1	191	)))
12.1	192
70.1	193	= III. action name =
14.1	194
93.1	195	The third part, ##/view/##, identifies the action that should process a request. So this tells what we want to do with the document, ##/view/## it, ##/edit/## it or ##/delete/## it, for example.
19.4	196
93.1	197	It's possible to configure XWiki to allow omitting this action when you wish to imply ##view## and also to have XWiki generate URLs without the ##view## action. This is achieved by editing ##xwiki.cfg## and setting {{code language="none"}}xwiki.showviewaction=0{{/code}}.
19.4	198
50.2	199	{{info}}
93.1	200	Before XWiki 7.2 and Nested Pages, XWiki was supporting dropping ##view## in the URL without changing the configuration. However this was broken in 7.2 in order to support Nested Pages.
50.2	201	{{/info}}
	202
20.1	203	= IV. Error Page =
19.4	204
14.1	205	At the ##WEB-INF/web.xml##, the ##location## of the 404 error code needs to be changed accordingly. For example:
	206
	207	{{code language="xml"}}
	208	<error-page>
9.1	209	<error-code>404</error-code>
	210	<!--<location>/xwiki/bin/view/Main/DocumentDoesNotExist</location>-->
	211	<location>/bin/Main/DocumentDoesNotExist</location>
	212	</error-page>
14.1	213	{{/code}}
9.1	214
20.1	215	= V. Conclusion =
4.1	216
	217	After performing all these changes, you should be able to access documents with URLs like:
14.1	218
4.1	219	* server.com/Space/Document
	220	* server.com/Space/ (pointing to Space.WebHome)
	221	* server.com/Document (pointing to Main.Document)
	222	* server.com/ will show Main.WebHome, without any redirect.
	223
5.1	224	As a bonus, these changes are backwards compatible, meaning that any currently working URL will also work with these changes performed, so you won't have any broken bookmarks.
54.1	225
	226
	227	= Other solutions =
	228
	229	Some XWiki users have contributed other solutions but they've not been verified by a XWiki Development Team member at this stage so use at your own risk ;)
	230
91.1	231	* [[Lighttpd + Jetty>>dev:Drafts.ShortURLsLighttpdJetty]]
58.1	232	* [[Apache + Tomcat>>http://odo.lv/Recipes/XWikiShortURLs?language=en]]

Wiki source code of Short URLs

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