Add control of what HTTP Request method AbstractFileResolvingResource methods exists, lastModified and lastModified uses on http url resources [SPR-11320]

[spring-projects-issues]

Lars Bo Spring opened SPR-11320 and commented

We recently upgraded to spring 3.2.4 from 3.0.0 and experienced a change in how UrlResource/AbstractFileResolvingResource work.

When the AbstractFileResolvingResource methods exists(), lastModified() and lastModified() are invoked on HTTP url resources, the http lookups are now performed as HTTP HEAD requests instead of in earlier releases that fetched the entire data.

In most situations this approach is very appropriate and reduces required network traffic.

However some less intelligently behaving remote services return 405 on HEAD requests, requiring that we subclass the resource type or implement it from scratch to avoid calls to the above methods (especially exists()) return an invalid response.

It would be great if it was possible to define what method to use on such requests as a property on AbstractFileResolvingResource alternatively on UrlResource, or to enable the URLResource to use the old way of handling those methods.

Hope this makes sense to you :-)

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Affects: 3.2.6, 4.0 GA

Backported to: 3.2.7

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

Would a protected customizeConnection(HttpURLConnection) method on AbstractFileResolvingResource help for your purposes? You could easily create a custom subclass of UrlResource then, overriding customizeConnection to set request method GET - or simply as a no-op, overriding the default HEAD setting to rely on the default which is GET anyway.

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Lars Bo Spring commented

Hi Juergen

Thanks for the prompt reply :-)

Yes, this would indeed fix my issue - good way of handling it.

Lars Bo

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

Alright, fixed in master for the next 4.0.1 snapshot. To be backported to 3.2.7 in a few minutes, making it available in an upcoming 3.2.7 snapshot as well...

Juergen