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Wiki source code of Short URLs

Version 93.1 by Alex Cotiugă on 2023/10/17
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1 {{box cssClass="floatinginfobox" title="**Contents**"}}
2 {{toc/}}
3 {{/box}}
4
5 This tutorial shows you how to tune your XWiki platform by replacing the default URL scheme with a shorter scheme.
6
7 {{info}}
8 A short URL is an URL without the ##xwiki/bin/view## parts.
9 {{/info}}
10
11 = I. Application name =
12
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##).
14
15 == Deploying as ROOT ==
16
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##.
18
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:
22
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##).
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.
28
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:
30
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
37 === When using the XWiki Debian Package ===
38
39 See [[Installation using Debian (.DEB) packages>>Documentation.AdminGuide.Installation.InstallationViaAPT.WebHome||anchor="HXWikiasrootwebapp28shortURLs29"]].
40
41 = II. Servlet mapping name =
42
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).
44
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):
46
47 * ##/resources/*## and ##/skins/*##: Statically served resources. These need to be served directly as static resources.
48 * ##/rest/*##: REST resources, served by the XWiki REST Servlet
49 * ##/redirect##: The XWiki Redirect Servlet used to redirect to the home page when no page is specified in the URL
50
51 There are various alternate to achieve this:
52
53 {{toc scope="local"/}}
54
55 {{info}}
56 You might be tempted to configure just your XWiki's ##web.xml## file [[but this won't work>>Documentation.AdminGuide.ShortURLs.ShortURLsInvalid.WebHome]].
57 {{/info}}
58
59 == UrlRewriteFilter ==
60
61 {{warning}}
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.
63
64 * Declare new Servlet mapping in ##web.xml##:(((
65 {{code language="xml"}}
66 <servlet-mapping>
67 <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
68 <url-pattern>/upload/*</url-pattern>
69 </servlet-mapping>
70 {{/code}}
71 )))
72 * Update the ##upload.js## content:
73 ** Do a backup of ##$XWIKI_WEBAPP/resources/uicomponents/widgets/upload.min.js##, then remove the original file
74 ** Edit the file ##$XWIKI_WEBAPP/resources/uicomponents/widgets/upload.js## and update the line {{code language="javascript"}}request.open('POST', this.formData.action);{{/code}} to:(((
75 {{code language="javascript"}}
76 request.open('POST', this.formData.action + '?form_token='+this.formData.additionalFields['form_token']
77 + '&xredirect=' + escape(this.formData.additionalFields['xredirect']));
78 {{/code}}
79 )))
80 {{/warning}}
81
82 "UrlRewriteFilter" is a [[framework offering a Servlet Filter>>http://www.tuckey.org/urlrewrite/]] allowing to rewrite URLs.
83
84 Install steps:
85
86 1. [[Download the JAR>>https://search.maven.org/artifact/org.tuckey/urlrewritefilter]] and put it in ##WEB-INF/lib##
87 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.
88 1. Drop the following content below in a file at ##WEB-INF/urlrewrite.xml##:(((
89 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.
90
91 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##.
92
93 {{code language="xml"}}
94 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
95 <!DOCTYPE urlrewrite PUBLIC "-//tuckey.org//DTD UrlRewrite 4.0//EN"
96 "http://www.tuckey.org/res/dtds/urlrewrite4.0.dtd">
97 <urlrewrite decode-using="null">
98
99 <rule>
100 <note>
101 Ensure that URLs that must not be served by the Action Servlet are not modified.
102 </note>
103 <from>^/((authenticate|bin|resources|skins|asyncrenderer|rest|wiki|jcaptcha|webjars|job)/(.*)|robots\.txt)$</from>
104 <to type="forward" last="true">-</to>
105 </rule>
106
107 <rule>
108 <note>
109 For all other URLs we prepend the "/bin/" prefix so that they get routed to the XWiki Action Servlet.
110 </note>
111 <from>^/(.*)$</from>
112 <to type="forward">/bin/$1</to>
113 </rule>
114
115 <outbound-rule>
116 <note>
117 Rewrite outbound URLs to remove the "/bin" part when there are two paths after it.
118 </note>
119 <from>/bin/(.*)/(.*)$</from>
120 <to>/$1/$2</to>
121 </outbound-rule>
122
123 <outbound-rule>
124 <note>
125 Rewrite outbound URLs to remove the "/bin" part when there's a single path after it.
126 </note>
127 <from>/bin/(.*)$</from>
128 <to>/$1</to>
129 </outbound-rule>
130
131 <outbound-rule>
132 <note>
133 Rewrite outbound URLs to remove the "/bin" part it's the last path.
134 </note>
135 <from>/bin$</from>
136 <to>/</to>
137 </outbound-rule>
138
139 </urlrewrite>
140 {{/code}}
141 )))
142
143 **Note**: for debugging of URL Rewrite filter, set the ##logLevel## parameter as described in https://tuckey.org/urlrewrite/manual/4.0/index.html#filterparams (using the value ##sysout:DEBUG##, the logs can be read in tomcat logs).
144
145 == Apache ==
146
147 Strategy:
148
149 * Tell Apache that ##/skins## and ##/resources## URLs are served statically so that they don't go through the Servlet container
150 * Configure ##web.xml## so that ##/*## URLs go through the Action Servlet
151 * Tell XWiki to not generate URLs with ##bin## in the path
152
153 Configuration steps:
154
155 * Setup the following Apache configuration:(((
156 {{code language="apache"}}
157 Alias /skins /usr/local/xwiki/skins
158 Alias /resources /usr/local/xwiki/resources
159
160 RewriteEngine on
161
162 RewriteRule ^/+skins - [L]
163 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.gwtrpc$
164 RewriteRule ^/+resources($|/.*) - [L]
165
166 ## For some reason, the "/" end points does not work with tomcat, so the workaround is to rewrite it to /Main
167 RewriteRule ^/*$ http://localhost:8080/Main/ [P,L]
168 ## For all other URLs, we go to tomcat
169 RewriteRule .* http://localhost:8080%{REQUEST_URI} [P,L]
170 ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
171 {{/code}}
172 )))
173 * Edit ##web.xml## and add:(((
174 {{code language="xml"}}
175 <servlet-mapping>
176 <servlet-name>action</servlet-name>
177 <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
178 </servlet-mapping>
179 {{/code}}
180 )))
181 * Add the following in ##xwiki.cfg## (empty value after the equal sign):(((
182 {{code language="none"}}
183 xwiki.defaultservletpath=
184 {{/code}}
185 )))
186
187 = III. action name =
188
189 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.
190
191 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}}.
192
193 {{info}}
194 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.
195 {{/info}}
196
197 = IV. Error Page =
198
199 At the ##WEB-INF/web.xml##, the ##location## of the 404 error code needs to be changed accordingly. For example:
200
201 {{code language="xml"}}
202 <error-page>
203 <error-code>404</error-code>
204 <!--<location>/xwiki/bin/view/Main/DocumentDoesNotExist</location>-->
205 <location>/bin/Main/DocumentDoesNotExist</location>
206 </error-page>
207 {{/code}}
208
209 = V. Conclusion =
210
211 After performing all these changes, you should be able to access documents with URLs like:
212
213 * server.com/Space/Document
214 * server.com/Space/ (pointing to Space.WebHome)
215 * server.com/Document (pointing to Main.Document)
216 * server.com/ will show Main.WebHome, without any redirect.
217
218 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.
219
220
221 = Other solutions =
222
223 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 ;)
224
225 * [[Lighttpd + Jetty>>dev:Drafts.ShortURLsLighttpdJetty]]
226 * [[Apache + Tomcat>>http://odo.lv/Recipes/XWikiShortURLs?language=en]]

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