Where do CSS and JavaScript files go in a Maven web app project?

I was faced with the same question in a maven project. There seems to be no good answer to my problem. So I did a simple experiment and it worked perfectly.

This is a simple maven project, I have the following directory structure: (Irrelevant directories are not shown)

───src
   └───main
       ├───java
       ├───resources
       └───webapp
           ├───javascript
           │   ├───test.js
           │   ├───example.js
           │   └───jquery-library.js
           ├───WEB-INF
           │    └───web.xml
           └───example.jsp

My JSP pages can refer to my javascript libraries simply as

<script src=javascript/jquery-library.js></script>

There is no need for any special configuration.

org.springframework.web.servlet.PageNotFound - No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/appname/css/myStyles.css] in DispatcherServlet

This indicates a configuration problem with your web.xml/spring context file. DispatcherServlet should not be processing a request for a css resource.

If this does not help troubleshoot the problem, you may want to post relevant snippets of your web.xml and spring context file.

So if you have your DispatcherServlet configured in a REST like URL pattern such as / then css files would go under src/main/webapp/resources

Just to clarify this is what I had to do:

1. Make sure that in your servlet-context.xml you have as follows:

   <resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" /> 
   

2. Create a folder if does not already exist under webapps called resources

3. Place your css folder along with css files there

4. Reference my css file as follows:

   <link rel="stylesheet" href="<%=request.getContextPath()%>/resources/css/960.css"/>