Using regular expression in Pretty Faces

Question

I have a project in which I am using Pretty Faces for url rewriting. This is the pretty-config.xml.

<url-mapping parentId="level2" id="level3" >
    <pattern value="/#{bean.urlLiv3 }">
    </pattern>
    <view-id value="/index.xhtml" />
    <action>#{bean.loadLiv3}</action>
</url-mapping>

<url-mapping parentId="level2" id="level2" >
    <pattern value="/#{bean.urlLiv2}">
    </pattern>
    <view-id value="/index.xhtml" />
    <action>#{bean.loadLiv2}</action>
</url-mapping>

<url-mapping parentId="main" id="level1" >
    <pattern value="#{ /.*-.*/ bean.urlLiv1 }" ></pattern>
    <view-id value="/index.xhtml" />
    <action>#{bean.loadLiv1}</action>
</url-mapping>
    
<url-mapping id="main">
    <pattern value="/" />
    <view-id value="/index.xhtml" />
    <action>#{bean.loadLiv0}</action>
</url-mapping> 

''' It goes on up to level 5. Without the regular expression /.*-.*/ on level 1 it works fine for every level, but when I add it I get an error when trying to navigate on levels 3, 4 and 5. This is the error

Error parsing url: </urlliv1-8/urlliv2-43/urlliv3-20>, a parameter did not match compiled segment in pattern: /#{ /.*-.*/ bean.urlLiv1 }/#{bean.urlLiv2}/#{ bean.urlLiv3 }

Does anyone has an idea why I get this error? Thanks

Answer 1

sorry for the slightly confusing error message. This is likely due to the fact that you are using .* in your regex patterns for urlLiv1.

A major problem with .* or . is that these patterns will match / characters. Try using something like this instead: [^/]* of the . matcher.