jsp - Not displaying images in Spring MVC

Question

I know this question has been asked many times, but I'm not able to figure out what the problem is. I have the images folder under the src/main/webapp folder (this a maven web project). I have the index.jsp in the src/main/webapp/WEBINF/views folder.

I'm trying to access the images and other resources like css and js like this:

<img src="/images/left_arrow.png" alt="" />

But the images are not getting displayed.

Here is the web.xml file

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>mvc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>mvc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Here is the WEB-INF/mvc-dispatcher-servlet.xml file

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">

<context:component-scan base-package="com.ravi.WebApp" />

<bean
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
    <property name="prefix">
        <value>/WEB-INF/views/</value>
    </property>
    <property name="suffix">
        <value>.jsp</value>
    </property>
</bean>

</beans>

Here is the Controller package com.ravi.WebApp;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class HelloController {

@RequestMapping("/")
public String printWelcome(Model model) {
    return "index";

}

}

Answer 1

Try adding the following resources declaration to your Spring configuration:

<!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /images/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/images directory -->
<resources mapping="/images/**" location="/images/" />    

Alternatively, and more common, is to have a resources folder which contains all your resources (images, css, js, etc...), broken out by sub-directories.

Your configuration would then look like:

<!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /resources/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/resources directory -->
<resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />

And your resources would be referenced as follows:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<c:url value="/resources/css/screen.css" />" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="<c:url value="/resources/js/jquery-1.6.4.min.js" />"></script>
<img src="<c:url value="/resources/images/left_arrow.png" />" alt="" />