[richfaces-issues] [JBoss JIRA] (RF-11888) Resource Servlet can't handle query string appended to resource url

[Brendan Healey (JIRA)]

    [ https://issues.jboss.org/browse/RF-11888?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12663205#comment-12663205 ] 

Brendan Healey commented on RF-11888:
-------------------------------------

Hello Brian, apologies for not responding earlier and thanks for the follow up. Here's
my perspective. My initial bug report was clearly erroneous in that I'd fixated on the
appending of a version string and failed to take into account the fact that the URL
contains the richfaces release version. As such my concerns that stale richfaces resources
with a long max-age (set by my application) could be served from browser cache following
a richfaces upgrade were invalid.

On this basis I'd be happy for the ticket to be closed. However...

I think you need to consider the fact that unless you are able to handle the appending
of a version string you'll be fielding a slow but steady stream of enquiries from now
to eternity.

As part of the very simple implementation of the ResourceHandler interface you have to
extend the ResourceHandlerWrapper class and override the createResource() method. In this
method you will deal with any exclusions, any URLs to which you do not wish to append a
version string. Here is the implementation I use:

    @Override
    public Resource createResource(String resourceName, String libraryName) {

        Resource resource = super.createResource(resourceName, libraryName);
        
        if(resourceName.equals("jquery.js") || (libraryName != null && (libraryName.equals("org.richfaces") ||
                libraryName.equals(SQCC_LIBRARY)))) {
            return resource;
        }
        else {
            return new CustomResource(resource);
        }
    }

The thing that is that when you use <h:outputScript name="jquery.js"/> you are using jquery
bundled with the richfaces libraries, as we all know. When you're using resource mapping it's
this <h:outputScript ../> tag which triggers the loading of packed.js, not the first richfaces
component on the page.

I'm already seeing people on the forum hitting this problem where they get the 'jsf is undefined'
error, which can be alleviated by using <h:outputScript library="javax.faces" name="jsf.js" before
<h:outputScript name="jquery.js"/>.

Although entirely logical, especially with the benefit of hindsight, it's not immediately
obvious that using the richfaces jquery is going to load the packed/compressed richfaces
resources.

As relevant to the resource handler, as you can see from my implementation of the createResource()
method above that it's presently necessary to exclude the resource name (not the library name)
"jquery.js" from having a version string appended, or it won't work.

I'd say this took me half a day to fully debug and put a workaround into place, so the question
is whether you wish to proliferate this scenario for other developers, or just handle the version
string. I recommend the latter option.

Thanks for your help.
Brendan.
                
> Resource Servlet can't handle query string appended to resource url
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: RF-11888
>                 URL: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/RF-11888
>             Project: RichFaces
>          Issue Type: Bug
>      Security Level: Public(Everyone can see) 
>          Components: resource handling
>    Affects Versions: 4.1.0.Final
>         Environment: Glassfish 3.1.1 (NO Tomcat)/Mojarra 2.1.3 Chrome browser - 
>            Reporter: Brendan Healey
>            Priority: Critical
>              Labels: waiting_on_user
>
> A custom resource handler (http://blogs.oracle.com/rlubke/entry/jsf_2_0_new_feature)
> can be used to append a version string (i.e. ?v=23) to a resource url to force a
> browser to refresh a resource rather than use any cached version.
> At present any appending of a version string causes a 404 response status, for example:
> Request URL:
> https://localhost:8181/MyApp/org.richfaces.resources/javax.faces.resource/org.richfaces.staticResource/4.1.0.Final/PackedCompressed/blueSky/packed/packed.css?v=23
> Removing the url parameter makes it work ok. As you can see I have resourceMapping
> enabled.
> This is essential to cause a browser to issue a request to the server if a static
> resource is held in a browser cache and is not expired, but you've upgraded the
> richfaces version. You have to have a way to invalidate the cache, and I'm not
> seeing how this can be done in a sensible way. You can set the Cache-Control
> no-cache header, but I'd need to do this in a way that says "I've just upgraded
> richfaces, so don't use the cache, issue a request to the server for the resource,
> but cache the result and use this until the next time".

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