Support .well-known serving in handlers

[sbordet]

The .well-known directory is being used for more and more things to automate operations related to websites.

For example, see #794.
Also, Let's Encrypt uses the .well-known directory to automate the issue of certificates.

For "normal" contexts, this is rather easy, since it's enough to add the .well-known directory to the resourceBase and it's done.

For less "normal" contexts, this is not doable.
For example, a MovedContextHandler would need to be able to serve content under .well-known and if that fails, fall back to the "moved" behavior.
Same goes for contexts that use a RedirectHandler.

The major problem is trying to serve the "/" URI.

Currently, a handler that has a resourceBase will try to serve / as a directory, or give a 403 if directory listing is not allowed.

What would be needed is a handler with some logic along these lines:

• If URI matches /.well-known and descendants => serve it like a ResourceHandler would from file system
• If URI matches / => forward to next/wrapped handler

So that is basically a ResourceHandler, but only for a particular directory (or set of paths).

If there are ways to achieve this, will be great to know.

[sbordet]

Doh.

It's enough to add a context mapped to /.well-known.
It will be more specific than / and so preferred.

One such context could serve for multiple virtual hosts.

[joakime]

@sbordet and @WalkerWatch would it be worth documenting this?

I can imagine this being a pretty common setup.

[gregw]

I think we should create a demo-base/webapps/well-known and a demo-base/webapps/well-known.xml in the standard jetty distro and then document it as well.

[joakime]

Interestingly, the concept of /.well-known/ in a URI is actually an RFC.

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5785

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[joakime]

From a ${jetty.base} point of view, I think supporting something like we do for ${jetty.base}/webapps/ROOT/, but for this usecase.

Perhaps something like ${jetty.base}/webapps/WELL-KNOWN/ is a good start.

I didn't suggest ``${jetty.base}/webapps/.well-known/as that doesn't work (the directory starting with.` is seen as a hidden directory by the DeploymentManager currently.

We could make that specific directory /.well-known/ an exception in DeploymentManager.

If we go this route, should we allow directory listing by default?

For embedded-jetty, a ResourceHandler with .well-known directory support is already well supported.

[sbordet]

I don't think we need anything special, this XML file is enough:

<Configure class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandler">
  <Set name="contextPath">/.well-known</Set>
  <Set name="handler">
    <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ResourceHandler">
      <Set name="resourceBase">/your/directory/.well-known</Set>
      <Set name="directoriesListed">false</Set>
    </New>
  </Set>
</Configure>

I guess it's only a documentation issue, and perhaps an example in demo-base.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has been a full year without activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

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This issue has been closed due to it having no activity.