In any modern web app, you probably want to have really cool and simple URLs like how WordPress does for your permalinks. E.g., the permalink for this posting is

http://bobobobo.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/how-do-i-design-a-simple-front-controller/

MUCH better than the typical MSDN type urls:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/52cs05fz.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d06h2×6e.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb385954.aspx

Do you think when I complete this posting and publish it, WordPress will ACTUALLY PUT A FILE at http://bobobobo.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/how-do-i-design-a-simple-front-controller/?

NO you dummy!!

Anytime you see REALLY simple urls like http://www.website.com/PersonsUsername/ most likely what is happening there is the web application is using something called REQUEST MAPPING. You do REQUEST MAPPING using what is called a FRONT CONTROLLER.

The FRONT CONTROLLER works to INTERPRET requests for specific URI’s AS requests to OTHER pages, engines, and so on.

Give this a watch.

First, NOTICE how simple that uri is? In case you didn’t follow the link through, its http://cakephp.org/screencasts/view/3.

So CakePHP a front controller to do “request mapping!” WATCH THE VIDEO to get an idea, dude.

ANYWAY, how do you create a really simple front-controller and do request mapping from a Java servlet?

Just create a regular servlet, then make the web.xml entry for it something like this:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>member</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>member</servlet-class>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>member</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/member/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

NOTICE the /member/* for the <url-pattern>? THAT means that ANY requests that come in with the pattern http://www.my.server.com/member/WHATEVER will AUTOMATICALLY be mapped down into the “member” servlet.

So the “member” servlet class might look something like this:

public class member extends HttpServlet
{
  protected void doGet( HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException
  {
    String requestURI = request.getRequestURI();  // if the user hit
    // http://www.my.site.com/member/BOB then the REQUEST URI looks like
    // /member/BOB
    // All I'm going to do now is get everything after the last slash,
    // and that is what will tell me which member profile is desired:
    String desiredUserProfile = requestURI.substring( requestURI.lastIndexOf("/") + 1 );

    // work with desiredUserProfile to produce page output, whatever.
  }
}

Get the idea?

See also:

Java:
http://java.sun.com/blueprints/corej2eepatterns/Patterns/FrontController.html

PHP:
http://www.phpwact.org/pattern/front_controller

Apache Server:

mod_rewrite