Web container custom properties

The size of the body content buffer for a JavaServer Pages (JSP) file can affect the performance of some applications. By default, the body content buffer size is 512 bytes. However, you can use the BodyContentBuffSize custom property to set a different buffer value.

Disables MyFaces searching for META-INF/*.faces-config.xml for all web applications on a server.

If other JavaServer Faces (JSF) applications are already deployed in the server and use an expression language (EL) parser other than the default, the JSF application you deploy can have the following error:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:                             
argument type mismatch:.javax.el.ELException                    
..                                                              
at                                                              
org.apache.myfaces.view.facelets.el.TagValueExpression.setValue 
   (TagValueExpression.java:129)                                
at javax.faces.component.UIInput.updateModel(UIInput.java:420)  
at                                                              
javax.faces.component.UIInput.processUpdates(UIInput.java:339)  
...

Typically, Expression Language (EL) expressions in tag files get evaluated before a JavaServer Page (JSP) is compiled. However, to ensure that an EL expression that contains a carriage return (\r), new line (\n), or tab (\t) character within the syntax does not cause a javax.el.Exceptionable exception, set the com.ibm.ws.jsp.expressionistic custom property to true. The custom property applies across the web container.

To enable the behavior for a specific application, set the doNotEscapeWhitespaceCharsInExpression attribute to true in the ibm-web-ext.xml file of the application.

Typically Expression Language (EL) expressions in tag files get evaluated before the tag files a JavaServer Page (JSP) is compiled. However, under certain conditions these EL expressions in a tag file do not get evaluated if the <el-ignored> attribute is set to true.

To ensure that EL expressions are always evaluated, set the com.ibm.ws.jsp.enableDefaultIsELIgnoredInTag custom property to true. The default value for this property is false.

This property enables you to indicate whether you want the JSP container to return an empty string or null for unset values in an expression.

<input type='text' name='test' value='<%=testBean.getTestValue()%>'maxlength=16> 

Some applications expect an empty string to be returned in these situations rather than the value of null. If the applications you are running expect an empty string to be returned, add this custom property to your web container settings and set the property to true.

The dynamic cache service uses flushes to determine when one cacheable web fragment, such as a JSP include or a c:import, ends and the next web fragment begins. If you set the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.usecdatatrim custom property to true for your JSP engine, all the blank space and extra lines in the generated Java code are stripped out. In this situation, there might not be any content to write before the first flush. If the generated Java code contains text or other code before the first flush, then normal dynamic cache service processing occurs.

If you set the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.usecdatatrim custom property to true, and are using the dynamic cache service, you must also set the com.ibm.ws.jsp.getWriterOnEmptyBuffer custom property to true. This custom property requires the JSP Engine to call the flush function when it reaches the end of the first cacheable web fragments even if there is not any data to flush. The default value for this property is false.

The body content buffer size of the tag bodies for a JavaServer Pages (JSP) file are reused to optimize performance. If the size of a tag body increases beyond the default body content buffer size, the buffer is resized to accommodate the tag body. However, the buffer is not reset to the default size after serving a request. As a result, the heap memory that is used by org.apache.jasper.runtime.BodyContentImpl implementation might increase over time. You can configure the body content buffer size by setting an integer value for the BodyContentBuffSize custom property. For more information, see BodyContentBuffSize.

Use the com.ibm.ws.jsp.limitBuffer custom property to deallocate large body content buffer sizes and create a buffer with the default buffer size.

Set the com.ibm.ws.jsp.throwExceptionForAddELResolver property to true if you do not want to allow an ELResolver to be registered from a servlet or a filter after the application receives a request from the client. When this property is set to true, an IllegalStateException is given as specified by the JSP (JavaServer Pages) specification for addELResolver() method of the JspApplicationContext interface.

The default value for this property is false.

Starting in Version 8.5.5.18, you can add the HSTS response header for a HTTPs request. To enable this option, set a web application context-parameter custom property. The param-value shown is an example:

<context-param>
  <param-name>com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ADD_STS_HEADER_WEBAPP</param-name>
      <param-value>max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload</param-value>
</context-param>

Optionally, add the server-level custom property. The value shown is an example:

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.addStrictTransportSecurityHeader="max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains"

If the requested static file has multiple consecutive dots in the name, the request is rejected by the server as a forbidden request.

When this property is set to true, the requested file is served.

The path to the file defined with the EDR (extended document root) option is not considered part of the installed application artifacts. Therefore, accessing the file requires special permissions. A Java.security.AccessControlException: Access denied (java.io.FilePermission) exception is issued if the required permissions are not provided for this file in the web application.

When this property is set to true, the application is allowed access to the file whose path is defined in the EDR.

If the query parameter in a URL contains only the string name instead of the expected name=value format, the server returns the value of request.getParameter(name) query as null.

When this property is set to true, if the query parameter in a URL contains only the string name, the server returns an empty string as the value for the request.getParameter(name) query.

This property removes the additional path when an application is deployed in a loose configuration, and is mainly used in a development environment or server.

This custom property specifies the maximum task queue size that is used to hold the dispatched asynchronous servlet.

This custom property specifies the interval which the web container should purge the task queue to release the resource of the canceled tasks.

By default, the web container uses asynchronous writes to write response data in chunks up to the response buffer size. For larger responses that are greater than the response buffer size, the web container continues to buffer response data into memory while waiting for an asynchronous write of a response data chunk to complete. This process can result in part of a large response that is held in memory, which can lead to high memory usage and potentially an out of memory error. An application server hang might also occur when a server is simultaneously processing more requests than web container-defined threads.

If the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.channelwritetype property is set to sync, synchronous writing is used, otherwise asynchronous writing is used by default. With synchronous writing, response data is written synchronously in chunks of up to the value of responsebuffersize and no response data are buffered into memory while waiting for a synchronous write of a response data chunk to complete. As a result, the approximate maximum amount of response data that is held in memory is equal to the responsebuffersize multiplied by the number of web container threads. The maximum number of requests that can be processed simultaneously by the web container is limited by the number of web container threads. Additional requests are queued, waiting for a request that is in process to complete.

The responsebuffersize web container custom property defines the maximum amount of response data that is written by the web container in a single chunk, and is 32k by default. As a result, it is used to change the number of writes that are needed by the web container to send complete response data. However, if an application flushes response data, any response data that is held by the web container is immediately written irrespective of the responsebuffersize.

Use the following name-value pair to write chunks of data using synchronous writes.

The ServletContext.getRealPath() Java Servlet API does not return the correct path for a requested resource when the resource exists in an extendedDocumentRoot path and does not exist in the installed application path. If you want the ServletContext.getRealPath() Java Servlet API to look for the requested resource in the extendedDocumentRoot path if the resource is not found in the installed application path, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.checkEDRinGetRealPath custom property to true.

When this property is set to true, and the requested resource is also not found in the extendedDocumentRoot path, a null value is returned.

This custom property addresses a situation where the request.getAttributeNames method returns a list of values. If a servlet modifies the list using the request.removeAttribute method, subsequent calls to the nextElement method cause a java.util.ConcurrentModificationException exception. To enable a servlet to modify the list, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.copyattributeskeyset custom property to true. When you set this custom property to true, a copy of the list of attributes is returned, which enables the servlet to modify the list without resulting in a java.util.ConcurrentModificationException exception when the nextElement method is called.

When the inbound request URI is not UTF-8 encoded, but the request encoding is set to UTF-8, characters whose encoded values are different in ISO-8859 are displayed incorrectly in the response. For example, a request might display the characters as n-tilde (Ñ) characters. To ensure that the characters are encoded and decoded correctly, based on the request encoding set, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.decodeParamViaReqEncoding Web container custom property to your Web container settings and set it to true.

This custom property defers serving requests until the whole Enterprise Archive (EAR) is started.

If this custom property is set to true, the web container enables CDI to work properly on custom error pages.

The web container processes a setCharacterEncoding(String) method of the ServletRequest API even if it is called after the post data is parsed. According to the Java Servlet Specification, the web container should ignore a setCharacterEncoding(String) method if the method is called after the data is parsed.

If you want the web container to ignore a setCharacterEncoding(String) method if the method is called after the data is parsed, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disableSetCharacterEncodingAfterParametersRead custom property to your web container configuration settings and set this property to true.

The default value for this property is false.

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disableStaticMappingCache custom property allows the user to disable the static caching. It can be set in the administrative console or though the context parameter in the web.xml.

To disable static caching for all deployed applications, use an asterisk. If you want to disable static caching for specific applications, use a comma.

For example, com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disableStaticMappingCache=* disables static caching for all deployed applications. com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disableStaticMappingCache=SpecialApp,RareApp disables static caching for only those two applications.

You can also set a context parameter in the web.xml to disable static caching for the application. The parameter name is com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.DISABLE_STATIC_MAPPING_CACHE and set the parameter value to true.

There is no default value for this property.

If a system application is the first to start, and the application attempts to load a global listener in a shared library that is associated with the server classloader, the application does not load that listener and prevents the listener from being loaded or invoked by a later non-system application. Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disableSystemAppGlobalListenerLoading custom property to true to prevent system applications from loading global listeners. When this property is set to true, the system application does not attempt to load the global listeners and later non-system applications can load them from a shared library that is associated with a server class loader.

When you configure server security, you can turn off the X-Powered-By header if you do not want to reveal which server you are running. Use this custom property to disable the X-Powered-By header, which prevents the header from being sent on the HTTP response. The default value is false. However, set this property to true, if you want to disable this header.

Use the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disallowAllFileServing custom property to disable file serving on all applications on a specific application server.

You can enable file serving on a global level across a given application server by using the fileServingEnabled custom property. However, the fileServingEnabled property is overridden by the specific deployment information of each application. Therefore, the current fileServingEnabled custom property applies only as a backup in case an application does not define the fileServingEnabled setting itself.

To globally override this setting on a specific application server to prevent the application server from serving static files regardless of their individual deployment settings, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.disallowAllFileServing web container custom property to true using the following name-value pair.

When the ServeServletsByClassnameEnabled property is enabled, it is possible to access servlets directly, resulting in a possible security exposure. Define the following custom property to disallow the use of the serveServletsByClassnameEnabled property across the entire application server level.

Typically, when the web container receives an UnavailableException, it cannot determine whether the exception was issued from a servlet or a dispatched resource. Therefore, the web container automatically marks the servlet unavailable even if it is the dispatched resource that is unavailable.

If you are running on Version 7.0.0.5 or later, and have set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.discernUnavailableServlet custom property to true, any UnavailableException that is issued from a dispatched resource is placed in a wrapper. This wrapper enables the web container to determine whether the exception was issued from the servlet or a dispatched resource. If the exception is not issued by the servlet, the web container does not mark the servlet unavailable.

The RequestDispatcher propagates the exceptions from the dispatched servlets back to the dispatching servlets. This is a change in behavior from that in previous releases. If you do not want the application to throw exceptions back to the servlet doing the dispatching, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.dispatcherRethrowSER custom property to the settings for the web container and set the property to false.

When a JavaServer Page (JSP) file contains a compilation error, the runtime error is caught and handled directly by the container. Exceptions are not propagated and addressed by the dispatched JSP resource. With the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.dispatcherRethrowSError custom property, exceptions are propagated back to the dispatched JSP resource.

The web container allows the display of custom text when no error page is defined. This property affects all applications on the server.

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.displayTextWhenNoErrorPageDefined="display text"

<webContainer displaytextwhennoerrorpagedefined="display text"/>

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.donotservebyclassname custom property specifies a list of classes that cannot be served by the class name.

If set to true, the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.emptyServletMappings custom property returns an empty collection when the servlet mappings are requested by the getMappings() method and no mappings have yet been added.

The matched error-code page is always returned even if there is also a matching exception type error page that is defined in the web.xml file. To have the Web container search and use the exception-type before the error-code, set this property to true.

Specify this property if you want to allow the keyword j_security_check to be used as part of the name of a resource. Typically, if a URI contains the keyword j_security_check the login process is initiated.

When a url-pattern is defined in the jsp-property-group of the web.xml, file, it is typically mapped to, and handled by the JavaServer Page (JSP) engine. If you have applications that must override this mapping so that they can handle and serve the JSP content themselves, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.enableJspMappingOverride property to true.

Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.enableMultiReadOfPostData custom property to true if you want to enable multiple reads of post data. When this property is set to true, the post data can be read multiple times as either an InputStream or Reader, and as parameters.

If either the first or third action does not occur, the next read of the post data is not reset to the beginning of that data.

The web container automatically completes this sequence if an application rereads the post data as parameters.

Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.enablePostOnlyJSecurityCheck custom property to true to disable all login methods except the POST method. You can set this custom property in the administrative console through web container custom properties. The server returns a 404 response status when all login methods are disabled.

Use the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.excludehandledtypesclasses custom property to exclude the handle type classes from being passed into the onStartup method of the ServletContainerInitializer implementation class.

Use the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.finishresponseonclose custom property to indicate that you want the web container to close a connection when a servlet calls close() on a writer or output stream.

Typically, when a servlet calls close() on a writer or output stream, the web container sends the data that has been written to the writer or output stream to the client, and then waits for the servlet service() method to finish before it closes the connection. This delay might be interpreted as a response completion delay, especially if a servlet service() method does not complete until sometime after the writer or output stream is closed.

When you configure an application to use a cookie to track the session, the default path for the cookie is set to the context root of the application. Therefore, the cookie is only sent to requests that are made to this application. To change the default path to be / (forward slash), such that the cookie is sent to requests for any application in this domain, set the ForceDifferentCookiePaths session manager custom property.

When an application overrides the URI pathinfo, the server does not use the overridden path to service the request, but instead uses the original request URI pathinfo. If you want the server to use the overridden URI path, then set com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.handlingRequestWithOverridenPath to true. Normally, when an application overrides the request URI path, that URI path is used by application and not by server.

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.HTTPOnlyCookies=*
com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.HTTPOnlyCookies=cookieName1,Account3Cookie,JsessionID 

For more information on the interaction of these two custom properties, see Cookie settings and Enablement and migration considerations of Security hardening features.

If a resource or Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) injection fails during the servlet initialization process, an error message is written to the server log files. However, the error message is not propagated to the client. In addition, the servlet is put into service and it is not reinitialized until its application is restarted. During this time, if a request is received that references the resource, which previously failed to inject, a NullPointerException exception results. Similarly, this problem can occur during the filter and listener initialization processes.

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ignoreinjectionfailure custom property enables you to specify whether to propagate these error messages and whether to put a servlet into service. By default, the custom property is set to false, which retains the previously described behavior. To enable the propagation of these injection exceptions to the client and to not put the servlet into service, you must leave this custom property set to false.

When the web container encounters an encoding character in a query string pair that is not valid, it throws an IllegalArgumentException exception and, by default, ignores the entire query string. In applications where every field in the query string is an essential resource, it might not be desirable to ignore the entire query string. If you set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ignoreInvalidQueryString custom property to true, the web container ignores query string pairs that are not valid and continues to process valid query string pairs.

If a parent class has its annotated @PostConstruct method overridden by a subclass, when the target subclass annotated method is called, the web container invokes the target subclass twice. If you set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ignorePostConstructOverriddenMethod custom property to true, the web container invokes only the target subclass method once, and any parent's overridden methods are ignored.

If this property is set to true, the web container ignores the semicolon and everything after it when redirecting to the welcome page.

The web container accesses a session for the static file requests involving filters. This action can result in a performance degradation, for example, when running with database session persistence. If you set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.IgnoreSessiononStaticFileRequest custom property to true, the web container cannot access a session for the static files requests involving filters.

Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.initFilterBeforeInitServlet custom property to true to initialize filters before initializing load-on-startup servlets during the startup process for an application.

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.invokeFilterAfterService custom property ensures that the web container does not call the failing flush() when the OutputStream is closed.

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.invokeFilterInitAtStartup custom property enables the web container to invoke the init method and initialize a filter during the startup process for an application.

Set this custom property to false so that the web container does not flush the response after service for a request to a static file when the application uses a response wrapper.

This property indicates whether post data is available to read after the client response is completed, following either the completion of a forward request completes, or a return from a sendRedirect. If this property is set to true, post data is available to read after the client response is completed either after a forward request completes, which is the default behavior, or on a return from a sendRedirect, which occurs when the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.SendResponseToClientAsPartOfSendRedirect custom property is set to true. However, setting this property to true requires unread post data to be held in memory until the target resource completes, and increases memory usage.

When examining the classes of an application to see whether they match any of the criteria that is specified by the HandlesTypes annotation of a ServletContainerInitializer, the container might run into class loading problems if one or more of the optional application JAR files are missing. Because the container does not decide whether these types of class loading failures prevent the application from working correctly, it ignores the failures and provides a configuration option that logs them.

Setting this property to true turns on logging.

When processing a request, the web container recognizes servlet mappings to * as the same as servlet mappings to /*. To provide the same behavior with filter mapping, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.mapFiltersToAsterisk custom property to true. Setting the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.mapFiltersToAsterisk custom property to true causes the web container to recognize filter mappings to * as a filter mapping to /*. This custom property is not case-sensitive.

You can use this property to change the maximum number of files allowed in a multipart upload request. An integer represents the maximum number of files allowed in a multipart upload request defaults to 5000.

You can set this property to -1 if you do not want to limit the number of files uploaded in a request.

You can use this property to change the maximum number of parameters that are allowed in your inbound requests, based on your applications and environment. The maximum number of parameters allowed per inbound request (GET or POST) defaults to 10000.

You can set this property to -1 if you do not want to limit the number of parameters that can be included in a request.

You can use this property to change the number of entries in the META-INF resource cache. The default for this property is 20.

When a file does not exist and is the target of an include or forward operation for a request dispatcher, a FileNotFoundException occurs. You enable this file not found exception behavior by setting this custom property to true and allowing the exception to be thrown when a file does not exist. If you set this property to false, the FileNotFoundException is suppressed as well as any logging of the failure. Also, if such a request results in a 404 exception, FFDCs are no longer created.

When this property is set to true, the web container returns a 304 response if the If-Modified-Since timestamp of the requested variant is newer than the timestamp of the target variant.

Typically, request URI 404 errors do not occur if a request URI is submitted from a browser because most modern browsers automatically normalize a request URI before calling WebSphere Application Server. Therefore, by default, the web container does not normalize a request URI before trying to resolve that URI to an application and servlet mapping.

A request URI, that includes /./ or /../ as part of an application context, that has not been normalized, might fail with a 404 error. Similarly, a request URI, that includes /./" or /../ as part of a servlet path, that has not been normalized, fails to match a servlet mapping, which also results in a 404 error, even though the URI is normalized before resolving the URI to a JavaServer Pages (JSP) or static file.

You can set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.normalizerequesturi custom property to true and the web container normalizes these types of request URIs.

If the web container attempts to process a request that includes UTF-8 post data that is not URL encoded, the target resource accesses the post data as parameters. However, the UTF-8 data is not decoded correctly and the result data might be lost.

To resolve this issue, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.parseUTF8PostData custom property to true. When the web container processes parameters, it detects UTF-8 post data that is not URL encoded and includes the data in the parameter values.

To use this function, you must set the value to true.

Use this custom property to preserve the original values of the parameter values used on the request.

The javax.servlet.ServletRequest.getParameterValues() method returns an array of String of the request parameter values. If this array of String is modified directly, the original request parameter values can be lost. Any subsequent call to javax.servlet.ServletRequest.getParameterValues() method returns the modified values.

To preserve the original request parameter values, you must set the value to true.

Typically, when a request is initially sent to the context root of the application, the request is forwarded to a welcome file. If a query string is included in an initial request, it is unavailable to the welcome file if you included the request.getQueryString() attribute in the welcome file. However, the query string is available to the welcome file if you included the javax.servlet.forward.query_string attribute in the welcome file.

If you must use the request.getQueryString() attribute, instead of the javax.servlet.forward.query_string attribute, to make the query string available to the welcome file, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.provideQStringToWelcomeFile custom property to your web container configuration and set the property to true.

If set to true, and a request is made to the context root of an application with a missing trailing slash, the WebContainer appends the trailing slash. The WebContainer redirects to the URL with the appended slash before it applies any servlet filters defined in the application.

For example, a request to http://host:port/contextRoot is redirected to http://host:port/contextRoot/ before any filters are applied.

When the redirect location provided is a relative URL and is without a leading '/' then during the conversion of the relative URI value to an absolute URL, the server removes the PathInfo from the existing URI.

Set com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.RedirectWithPathInfo to true to ensure that existing PathInfo is not removed. The extra path information until the last trailing slash will be appended to the URI and then redirected to the resource.

By default, the getAttributeNames() method can return an attribute name whose value has been set to null if the value passed to the ServletRequest.setAttribute() or ServleContextt.setAttribute() method is null. This default behavior is not in accordance to the API.

If you want the web container to remove the attribute if the null object is passed to the ServletRequest.setAttribute() or ServleContextt.setAttribute() method, add this com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.removeAttributeForNullObject custom property to your web container configuration, and set the property to true.

Use the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.returnDefaultContextPath custom property to return the correct context path when an application is installed on the default context root. For example, when the property is set to true, the context path is set to an empty string for any application that is installed on the default context root.

By default, when a servlet calls the java.io.InputStream.available method, the method can return a -1 value when the end of the data stream is reached. If your code allocates a new buffer when the returned value is -1, such as with the byte[InputStream.available()] code, a maximum integer buffer is created. This maximum integer buffer can cause your system to run out of memory. To avoid the out of memory condition, check the return value of the InputStream.available method and if it is less than the value of 0, do not allocate a new buffer. Alternatively, set this custom property to the true value so that the java.io.InputStream.available method returns a 0 value instead of a -1 value.

Use the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.searchMetaInfResourcesDuringAppStart custom property to disable the enhanced feature when searching for the /META-INF/resources.

This property indicates whether a response is completed as part of a sendRedirect request. If this property is set to true, a response is completed as part of a sendRedirect request, and any post data associated with the request is not available for a read on return from sendRedirect.

The default value is false.

This property indicates whether a response is completed on return from a forward request.

If this property is set to false, a response is not completed on return from a forward request. Instead, it is delayed until the target resource completes. Post data is available for a read after the forward completes.

When autoResponseEncoding is enabled or when the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.contentTypeCompatibility property is set, the application server sets the content type of the response using an internal method. To enable setting the content-type using the ServletResponse.setContentType method instead, you need to set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.setcontenttypebysetheader custom property to false.

If this property is set to true, the web container sets the current request URI as the target of the async dispatch.

Typically, the first time the web container handles a request for a static welcome page that is not a JavaServer Pages (JSP) file, the web container does not search the ExtendedDocumentRoot for the welcome file unless the request for that welcome file is fully qualified. If the request is fully qualified, the web container serves the welcome file, and the context root of the application displays the welcome file. If the request for the static welcome file is not fully qualified, the web container returns a 404 error, which indicates that the web container did not find the welcome file.

After the web container successfully serves a welcome file, the web container creates a mapping for that welcome file. The web container then uses this mapping to handle future requests for the welcome file, eliminating the need for subsequent requests to be fully qualified.

If you want the web container to always search an application defined ExtendedDocumentRoot for a welcome file, even if the request is not fully qualified, you can add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ServeWelcomeFileFromExtendedDocumentRoot custom property to your web container settings, and set this property to true.

By default, when an application is stopped the web container waits up to 60 seconds for each active request for a resource of that application to complete. You can now define the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ServletDestroyWaitTime web container custom property to control the amount of time that the web container waits for an active request to complete when the owning application is stopped.

Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.ServletDestroyWaitTime custom property to an integer value, which specifies the number of seconds to wait for a request to complete. The default value is 60 seconds.

Typically, the web container encodes the specified error messages before formatting them, to prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks on the client if the application does not sanitize these messages. However, the Java Servlet Specification for the sendError(int, String) method, indicates that the server should create the response to look like an HTML-formatted server error page.

If you do not want the web container to encode the specified error messages before formatting them, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.setUnencodedHTMLinsendError custom property to your web container configuration settings, and set the property to true.

If this property is set to true, the web container stops reading the remaining POST data if there has been an exception before or during the parsing of POST data.

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.skipInputStreamReadOnError custom property must be used in pair with the preventRequestBodyPurge channel custom property set to true.

The web container searches for static files and JavaServer Pages (JSP) files in different locations, depending on application configuration. A web fragment comprises a JAR file in an application WEB-INF/lib directory. The JAR file might include static resources in a META-INF/resources directory that are defined within the JAR file. To prevent the web container from searching the META-INF/resources directories, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.SkipMetaInfResourcesProcessing web container custom property to true.

The default value for the custom property is false.

The web container adds a $WSEP HTTP header name for some error conditions (for example, a 403 error code). Certain applications or stack products cannot handle a dollar sign ($) as part of the header. If this property is set to true, the web container does not include the $WSEP header in the error page response, unless it finds a $WSPC header that is set to ErrorPage in the request. If the property is set to false, which is the default behavior, the web container will include the $WSEP header in the error page response.

The com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.suppressheadersinrequest custom property can be used to suppress the inclusion of request headers that start with special characters, such as $ or _. Some applications do not handle request headers that start with special characters.

The value that is specified for this custom property is a delimited list of the header prefixes that you want to be suppressed.

Example:

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.suppressheadersinrequest=$WS,_WS

During a recursive error that an application-specified error page cannot handle, the stack trace and error message are output as an HTML page. This information includes class names and program information that the application developer does not want expose to the user.

You can set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.suppressHtmlRecursiveErrorOutput web container custom property to suppress the HTML output of the error text, without changing the internal logging of the message. Set the custom property com.ibm.ws. webcontainer.suppressHtmlRecursiveErrorOutput to true to disable the HTML output of the error message to the user and present the user with blank page with a 500 error code.

Typically, the last zero-byte chunk is used to indicate to a client the end of the response data in a chunked encoded transmission. Some applications use this last zero to determine when the response data is received, and they can start processing it. If an error occurs in the application after the response headers are sent, the last chunk of data is still sent to the client. The client might not realize that an error occurred, and attempt to process incomplete data.

If you set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.suppressLastZeroBytePackage custom property to true, if an error occurs in the application after the response headers are sent, the last chunk of data is not sent to the client.

The web container generates a severe error message with a FileNotFoundException stack trace in the Java virtual machine (JVM) logs when a missing file is requested. This might not be a severe error if the wrong file was accidentally requested. Set this property to true to generate a warning message in the JVM logs instead of a severe error message when a file is not found.

Set to a string value for a URI that you want message SRVE0255E suppressed. The specified request URI string is case insensitive. Only one request URI is supported and needs to match exactly before the error message is suppressed. No wild card usage is allowable in the string value specification.

You can use this property to suppress the logging of any RuntimeException that occurs during service of a servlet.

By default, the Web container logs the exception of type RuntimeException in the JVM logs, if the exception occurs during the service of a servlet. When this property is set to true, the web container does not log any type of RuntimeException that occurs during service of a servlet.

If a servlet creates an exception, it is logged to the system console. If you do not want the web container to log servlet-created exceptions, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.suppressServletExceptionLogging custom property to the web container configuration settings, and set the property to true.

Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.throwMissingJspException custom property to true to create a FileNotFoundException when a resource that is included by a JSP file is missing. If this property is not set to true, an error page displays.

Set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.throwpostconstructexception custom property to true to propagate custom error messages to the error.xhtml file.

Symbolic links that exist in the application installation directory are tolerated when you use this custom property.

This property must be set at the node agent level.

Dispatch of an asynchronous servlet request might cause a com.ibm.websphere.servlet.session.UnauthorizedSessionRequestException error. To ensure that the web container captures the security context of the thread which starts the asynchronous request and uses this during AsyncContext.dispatch(), AsyncContext.complete(), and AsyncContext.start() method calls, set the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.transfercontextinasyncservletrequest custom property to true. Its default value is false.

If a request is overridden or the application implemented the ServletRequest interface, the application might fail to serve the request because either the overridden or implemented request object, instead of the request object, is being used to handling of the request. To ensure that the request object is used to handle the request, add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.useOriginalRequestState custom property to the web container configuration settings, and set it to true.

If set to true, the web container ignores the semi-colon; everything after it is also ignored when calling javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest.getPathInfo().

Error message SRVE0017W states Web Group not found: {0}, and error message SRVE0255 states A WebGroup/Virtual Host to handle {0} is not defined. These messages might be returned when the application that is called to process the request that is serviced by IBM® WebSphere Application Server is not found. You can use the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webgroupvhostnotfound custom property to change the text of these messages to text that is more suitable for your environment.

This custom property enables you to configure the value of the X-Powered-By header, which supplies the implementation information of the server.

Symbolic links that exist in the application installation directory are deleted when the application is uninstalled or updated. To ensure that symbolic links are not deleted, add the com.ibm.websphere.management.application.sync.deleteSymbolicLinks custom property to your JVM and set it to false.

Set this property to true to allow the web container to store multiple values for a custom tag attribute.

Set the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.convertAttrValueToString web container custom property to true to convert start and end attributes of the repeat tag to strings before they are used.

Set the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.disableElCache web container custom property to true to disable the commons-el expression cache if you are experiencing out of memory conditions because the hash maps are held by the expression evaluator.

The resource injection feature accesses resources in applications differently than it did in earlier versions of the product, and causes the compiled method output to be larger than it was previously. If you have large JSP files that in earlier releases pushed the 65535-byte limit in the translated service method, they might now exceed this limit, causing the compile to fail.

If you encounter this situation, you can either break a large JSP file into smaller JSP files, and use <jsp:include> statements to combine them after they are compiled, or you can add the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.disableResourceInjection custom property to your web container settings to disable the resource injection function during the JSP translation process. When the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.disableResourceInjection custom property is set to true, the resource injection function is disabled for all applications.

If you want only to disable the resource injection function for specific applications, you can add the disableResourceInjection JSP attribute to the ibm-web-ext.xmi files for those specific applications.

The com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.disableTldSearch custom property can be used to improve application startup time. By default, when an application starts, the JSP engine searches the application installation directories for the taglib descriptor (TLD) files. This search process might increase the startup time for large applications with many files and directories. To disable this search process, set this property to true.

Set the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.enabledoublequotesdecoding web container custom property to decode an encoded double quotation mark character if it is embedded in a script function within a JavaServer Pages (JSP) file.

The JSP Container does not decode an encoded double quotation mark character during the translation of a JSP file. Instead, there is a dependency on the browser to decode it. However, when an encoded double quotation mark character exists inside a script function of a tag, the browser cannot decode it. Thus, when this custom property is not set, the encoded double quotation mark character causes the script function to malfunction.

When you set this custom property, the value affects all of your deployed applications. If you want to affect an individual application, set the enableDoubleQuotesDecoding JSP attribute to true within the ibm-web-ext.xmi file in your application.

When the web container generates HTML code from a JSP document, the web container does not remove any xmlns attributes that are specified for tags in the JSP document. Therefore, when the JSP document is rendered on the browser, the xmlns attributes remain in the generated HTML code.

To ensure that the xmlns attributes are always removed from generated HTML code, add the com.ibm.wsspi.jsp.removexmlnsfromoutput custom property to your web container configuration settings and set this property to true.

When you set this custom property, the value affects all of your deployed applications. If you want to affect an individual application, set the removeXmlnsFromOutput JSP attribute to true within the ibm-web-ext.xmi file in your application.

The DebugSessionCrossover custom property enables code to perform additional checks to verify that only the session that is associated with the request is accessed or referenced. Messages are logged if any discrepancies are detected.

To enable session data crossover detection, set this property to true

Refer to the HTTP session problems article for additional information.

The UTF-8 encoded URL feature, which provides UTF-8 encoded Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to support the double-byte characters in URLs is enabled by default. You can prevent the web container from explicitly decoding URLs in UTF-8 and have them use the ISO-8859 standard as per the current HTTP specification by setting this custom property to false.

When this property is enabled, if the connection handle is not closed and the servlet ends, the web container (as part of postinvoke), parks the connection and does not close the connection handle.

When an inbound request URI maps to multiple URL filter mappings the filter chain is updated with the same filter multiple times, causing the filter to be invoked multiple times for the same URI. If you add the com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.denyDuplicateFilterinChain custom property to your web container settings and set this property to true, a filter is not added to a filter chain if it is already present in that chain.

Use the enableInProcessConnections custom property to reduce response times and to reduce the number of threads that are used to service a request, which reduces the potential for a deadlock. The custom property applies for JAX-RPC and JAX-WS scenarios, but not for JAX-RS scenarios.

There is an optimized communication path between a web services client application and a web container that are located in the same application server process. Requests from the web services client that are normally sent to the web container using a network connection are delivered directly to the web container using an optimized local path. The local path is available because the web services client application and the web container are running in the same process. This optimized communication path is disabled by default. Before enabling this property, make sure that wildcards are not specified for the web container ports. Use specific ports for the web container when the optimized communication path is enabled.

To enable the optimized communication path, set this property to true.

Refer to the Web services client to web container optimized communication topic for additional information.

fileServingEnabled, directoryBrowsingEnabled, and similar properties are global settings for internal servlets. Web application archive (WAR) files that are packaged using third-party tools cannot specify behavior for the services that are exposed by the web container internal servlets.

Settings that are defined in an assembly tool take precedence over the global settings that are set through the custom properties at the web container level.

Web application deployment extensions continue to hold configuration information for the services that are provided by the internal servlets, and take precedence over the global settings that are set through the custom properties at the web container level.

Newly generated session IDs are, by default, 23 characters in length, unless you use the HttpSessionIdLength custom property to specify a different maximum length for your session IDs.

When an incoming request has a session ID that is longer than the expected session ID length, and whose prefix is identical to a pre-existing session ID, the longer ID is used to return a new session. If the length of the session ID on the incoming request is larger than the maximum length that is specified for your system, such that it exceeds the width of the ID column in the session table column that is used in database persistence, an SQL0302 error occurs.

To prevent the occurrence of these SQL0302 errors, you can add the ForceSessionIdLengthCheck custom property to your web container custom properties and set it to true. When this custom property is set to true, the length of a session ID cannot exceed 23 characters. If an incoming request has a session ID that is longer than 23 characters, the first 23 characters are used to return a new session.

The ForceSessionInvalidationMultiple custom property indicates whether the session manager should wait indefinitely for a request to complete before attempting to invalidate the session, or attempt to invalidate a session after the specified time limit has elapsed.

• If you specify 0 (zero) for this custom property, the session manager waits indefinitely until a request is complete before attempting to invalidate the session.

  If your requests normally are not bound by a response time limit, specify 0 for this property.

• If you specify a positive integer, such as 1, 2, or 3 for this custom property, even if a session is not known to have completed, the session manager attempts to invalidate the session if the indicated time period since the last access occurred has elapsed. This time period is the result of multiplying the value that is specified for this property and the value that is specified for the Session Timeout property. For example, if you specify 2 minutes for the Session Timeout property and 2 for the ForceSessionInvalidationMultiple property, the session manager attempts to invalidate the session after 4 minutes.

  If you want to invalidate your sessions after a certain amount of time has elapsed, specify the appropriate positive integer for this property.

The custom property httpsIndicatorHeader manages HTTPS requests that are forwarded to an application server from an SSL offloader that is used in front of WebSphere Application Server. When an HTTPS request is received by an SSL offloader, it is redirected over HTTP to an application server using WebSphere Application Server. The SSL offloader must be configured to add a special header indicating that the original request was over HTTPS. The httpsIndicatorHeader property specifies the request header key name added by the SSL box. The application server checks this indicator to determine whether SSL is required. If it determines the request is SSL over HTTP, an HTTPS scheme is chosen.

The servlet specification supports applications registering listeners for servlet-related events on an individual application basis through the web.xml descriptor. However, using the listeners custom property, you can enable a server to listen to servlet events across web applications.

listeners=listener_class

The value for this property is a string, specifying a comma-separated list of listener classes. The listener that is supplied must implement standard listener classes from the Java Servlet API or IBM listener extension classes.

WebSphere Application Server 5.x supports Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) without leading front slashes ( / ). To preserve compatibility, you can set this custom property to true. When this property is set to true, the web container ignores the specification and considers URLs without the leading front slash, use the following name-value pair.

The trusted custom property enables the application server to use inbound private headers from the web server plug-in. These inbound private headers notify the application server about the connection to the web server. When you set the custom property to true, the application server uses the asserted information on the client certificates. These client certificates are used by the user to connect to the web server and establish the client information, which is treated as the certificate for the user. Then, the application server uses the certificate information for authentication purposes when client certificate authentication is used or when the application code accesses the javax.net.ssl.peer_certificates certificates. Because this information is asserted, it is insecure and potentially vulnerable to an attacker that is able to connect directly to the application server and bypass the web server.

The HTTP transport channel custom properties of trustedHeaderOrigin and trustedSensitiveHeaderOrigin control whether these inbound private headers are trusted. By default, the trustedSensitiveHeaderOrigin custom property is set to none so that no sensitive private headers are trusted. The trustedHeaderOrigin custom property is set to * so that all non-sensitive private headers are trusted from any host. These new properties accept a list of IP addresses, which, if configured, define the hosts from which private headers are trusted. However, if this trusted property is set to false, the configurations of the trustedHeaderOrigin custom property and the trustedSensitiveHeaderOrigin custom property are overridden, and no inbound private headers are processed.