How do I map a path to a static HTML file?

Question

This is the simplest example where we map a path to a String, so we are responsible to build the whole HTML:

get("/hello", (req, res) -> "Hello World");

We can also use template engines that will build the HTML for us given the ModelAndView:

Map map = new HashMap();
map.put("name", "Sam");

// hello.html file is in resources/templates directory
get("/hello", (rq, rs) -> new ModelAndView(map, "hello"), new ThymeleafTemplateEngine());

Now, what if I want to map a path to a static HTML file, where I don't have any variables to be interpreted by a template engine? I know I could simply use an empty map:

get("/static", (rq, rs) -> new ModelAndView(new HashMap(), "static"), new ThymeleafTemplateEngine());

But then I would be going through the engine's overhead without any reason.

I know I could also read the HTML file and return it as a String, like this gist did. But I feel there might be a cleaner way to do this. Is there?

Jerome Anthony · Answer 1 · 2015-09-20T23:09:33.403

2

You can create a staticfiles location and reference html there directly.

Spark.staticFileLocation("/static");

Create a folder called static under your resources directory.

/src/main/resources/static

Put your static html in this file (e.g., test.html)

Now you can access the files directly via the browser as;

http://localhost:8080/test.html

edited Sep 20 '15 at 23:09

answered Sep 20 '15 at 22:57

Jerome Anthony

7,823
2
40
31

By using `staticFileLocation()`? And how would I exactly reference the HTML? Just returning its path? – Fred Porciúncula Sep 20 '15 at 22:59
Yes. Full path to the file under the static folder name – Jerome Anthony Sep 20 '15 at 23:00
It doesn't seem to work. I will edit my question with the tests I made. – Fred Porciúncula Sep 20 '15 at 23:03
So simple! But is there a way to map paths to the static file? – Fred Porciúncula Sep 20 '15 at 23:17
Spark uses jetty underneath. You can try using ResourceHandler. – Jerome Anthony Sep 20 '15 at 23:21
[This answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/26421518/4893160) describes a fun way to serve a html file :) – spark-java Sep 21 '15 at 21:42
Hahah, it's fun indeed. Thanks! It's probably the cleanest way to transform the file into a `String` and then just serve it to the simple `get` from Spark. Way better than the gist I pointed in my question. – Fred Porciúncula Sep 23 '15 at 14:20

How do I map a path to a static HTML file?

1 Answers1