Virtual and Physical HTTP Resources

One of the many responsibilities of the Web server is to map URL requests to physical resources on the Web server: static files, scripted dynamic files, or compiled components and APIs. The simplest systems have a one-to-one mapping between a URL and a physical file, with the URL context mapping directly to a file system directory and all the directory paths in the location—text between the slashes, /—mirrored in the subdirectories of the file system.

Figure 12-8 shows a URL hierarchy; the root identifies the protocol (http:), the name of the host (localhost), and the application context (appcontext). Each of the requestable resources—HTML, JSP, GIF encoded files—is shown with the fully qualified URL. Note ...

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