Tomcat, JAX-RS, Jersey, @PathParam: how to pass dots and slashes?

Question

Having a method like this: ``` @GET @Path("/name/{name}") @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN) public String getProperty(@PathParam("name") String name) { System.out.println(name); } ``` How do I pass a value like "test./test"? ``` /name/test./test gives HTTP 404 /name/test.%2Ftest gives HTTP 400 /name/test.%252Ftest prints test%2Ftest ``` But if I do `name = URLDecoder.decode(name);` it prints `/test` and the first part of `test.` disappears. There is one or two questions like this already but they are old and there was no good solution found, I thought I'll ask again.

Accepted Answer

The pattern in the `@Path` annotation is internally turned into a regular expression, with the template parts matching only selected characters by default. In particular, they normally don't match `/` characters; that's almost always the right thing to do (as it lets you put templates part way through a path) but in this case it isn't as you're wanting to consume the whole subsequent path. To get everything, we have to override the regular expression fragment for that particular template; this is actually pretty easy, since we just put in the template fragment a `:` followed by the RE that we want to use:

```
@GET @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
@Path("/name/{name:.+}")
public String getProperty(@PathParam("name") String name) {
    return name;
}
```

This will match all characters after the `/name/` (up to but not including any `?` query part) but will only match if there's something there at all. Be aware that if you have any other `@Path("/name/...")` things about, things can get really confusing! So don't do that.

Tomcat, JAX-RS, Jersey, @PathParam: how to pass dots and slashes?

Solution

Problem