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ShortURLs

Version 11.4 by Sergiu Dumitriu on 2010/03/18
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Short XWiki URLs

This tutorial shows how to tune your XWiki platform by replacing the default URL scheme with a shorter scheme.

Information

A short URL is an URL without the xwiki/bin/view parts.

Application name

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).

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. Achieving this again depends on the container, as there's no standard regarding the ROOT application. For example 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). In Jetty, the default name is root. Refer to your container's documentation for more details.

Warning

Before XWiki Platform 1.3, the the display-name parameter in web.xml must also be changed to reflect the new application name. For example if you've deployed the XWiki webapp as ROOT then you'll need to have:

<display-name></display-name>

Struts action name

The third part, /view/, identifies the struts action that should process a request. So this tells what do we want to do with the document, /view/ it, /edit/ it or /delete/ it, for example. The XWiki platform allows this part to be missing, considering that the default action is to just display the document, so an URL like server.com/bin/Space/Document will work out of the box.

Even more, the URL factory, the component that generates URLs, can be configured to skip this part when the action is /view/. To do this, in xwiki.cfg write:

xwiki.showviewaction=0

Servlet mapping name

The second part is the hardest part to remove. It identifies the servlet that should process the page, which, for /bin/, is the Struts servlet. To get rid of /bin/, for the moment web.xml must be changed in a  container-dependent way, so that the container's default servlet is configured to serve the existing directories, like skins, yui, tinymce and wikieditor. In Jetty, the container shipped with the XWiki installer, you will have to write something like:

<servlet>
   <servlet-name>defaultSkins</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.Default</servlet-class>
   <init-param>
     <param-name>relativeResourceBase</param-name>
     <param-value>skins</param-value>
   </init-param>
   <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
 </servlet>
 <servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>defaultSkins</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/skins/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>

In Tomcat, the default servlet does not accept a parameter for changing the resource base, so you will need to write another default servlet.

The second thing to do, is to copy the mapping for the Struts servlet to also be activated for /, like:

<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>

Be sure to leave the other mappings in place, so that /bin/ works, too.

And the last thing that must be changed is the default mapping used by the URL factory, by adding in xwiki.cfg:

xwiki.defaultservletpath=
Warning

Before 1.7, the setting name was xwiki.defaultactionpath.

Alternative: Changing the mapping name

If removing the /bin part is not possible in your environment, you can still rename it to something less technical, and which would fit better in your site, like /wiki. To do this, you must first add a mapping for the new path, as in:

<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/wiki/*</url-pattern>
 </servlet-mapping>

This means that the wiki now accepts requests through this mapping.

Information

This specific mapping (/wiki) should already be there, but you need to add a new one for other custom mappings.

Warning

The /wiki mapping is reserved for multiwiki with path based wiki mapping setup, so use something else in this scenarion. It should work fine when multiwikis are disabled, or when only hostname wiki mapping is used.

Then you must make sure that accessing the application without a servlet in the path (as in http://server.com/xwiki/## when XWiki is not set as the ROOT application, or http://server.com/## if XWiki is the ROOT application) redirects to the right servlet. This involves changing the configuration for the redirect servlet in web.xml; search for the declaration of the redirectHomeServlet, uncomment the init-param section, and adjust accordingly:

<servlet>
   <servlet-name>redirectHomeServlet</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>com.xpn.xwiki.web.HomePageRedirectServlet</servlet-class>
   <!-- Uncomment and edit this if you want to redirect to a different home page, or if you have different mappings.
         Note: the URL should not start with /, because it allows the context name to be changed. If it starts with /,
         then it should be an absolute URL, including the application context path. -->
   <init-param>
     <description>The address to redirect to when the client hits the root of the application.</description>
     <param-name>homePage</param-name>
     <param-value>wiki/</param-value>
   </init-param>
 </servlet>

Also change the default mapping used by the URL factory, by adding in xwiki.cfg:

xwiki.defaultservletpath=wiki/

Optionally, you can make sure that accessing the hostname without a path (as in http://server.com/##) redirects to the right servlet. This depends on your environment. In a Tomcat + Apache HTTPD + mod_redirect, just update the settings:

RedirectMatch ^/$ /xwiki/wiki/
    RedirectMatch ^/xwiki/$ /xwiki/wiki/

In the default standalone distribution (with Jetty), the ROOT application only redirects to the /xwiki application, so configuring the XWiki redirect servlet is enough if you don't change the application name. If you do, just edit the web.xml of the root webapp, uncomment the init-param of the XWikiDispatcherServlet and change the application name.

Error Page

At the WEB-INF/web.xml, the location of the 404 error code needs to be changed accordingly. For example:

<error-page>
   <error-code>404</error-code>
   <!--<location>/xwiki/bin/view/Main/DocumentDoesNotExist</location>-->
   <location>/bin/Main/DocumentDoesNotExist</location>
 </error-page>

Conclusion

After performing all these changes, you should be able to access documents with URLs like:

  • server.com/Space/Document
  • server.com/Space/ (pointing to Space.WebHome)
  • server.com/Document (pointing to Main.Document)
  • server.com/ will show Main.WebHome, without any redirect.

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.

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