Avoid automatic servlet mapping for a Servlet created as a @Bean in Spring Boot

Question

I have a servlet to which I need to supply dependencies via autowiring (it's a class from an external library, I cannot change its code). I try to register it as a bean and later register it using programmatic registration (ServletContextInitializer). Here is what I have:

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {
    @Bean
    public MyServlet myServlet() {
        return new MyServlet();
    }
}

Also, SpringMVC-related autoconfiguration creates a usual DispatcherServlet and maps it at /.

When I try to start the application, I get the following:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Multiple servlets map to path /: dispatcherServlet[mapped:JAVAX_API:null],myServlet[mapped:JAVAX_API:null]

So it looks like Spring Boot (or Spring itself?) automatically maps the servlet at the default /. I would like to avoid the mapping at all as I just need to create the servlet instance; I will register it myself later.

Can this be done?

Answer 1

you should use a ServletRegistrationBean then you can provide an extra mapping

@Bean
public MyServlet myServlet() {
    return new MyServlet();
}

@Bean
public ServletRegistrationBean myServletRegistration(MyServlet myServlet) {
    ServletRegistrationBean registration = new ServletRegistrationBean(myServlet,
            "/myservlet/*");
    registration.setLoadOnStartup(1);
    return registration;
}