Changing a URL without changing all your HREFs

When writing JSPs using Spring MVC and Struts I've found myself hard-coding URL's and it just doesn't feel right. Later when I decide to change the URL of a page I have to go through and search replace that URL in a dozen other pages… and it pains me!

Tapestry uses the PageLink to do this quite gracefully. In your Tapestry HTML files you simply put <a href=”#” jwcid=”pageX”>Click me</a&gt and then Tapestry will fill in the correct URL of pageX.

David Geary also blogged about adding this feature to Shale for JSF.

Basically, my feeling is that the actual URL of a page should only live in one place and I should be able to change it to my hearts content without having to edit all of my other JSP files to point them to the new location.

What are some best practices or ideas for JSP based apps to help me avoid hard-coding URLs in the pages?

Update: so far I've received one good suggestion of using a resource bundle to store the actual URLs and using a taglib to fill in the values.

Update 2: one other point I neglected to mention is that having your application resolve the URLs for you has the added benefit that when there is a bad link you should get a page compilation error. Tapestry does this through the PageLink component which means you won't get a page in production that has a bad application internal URL. Whereas with Struts and SpringMVC it's much easier to get a bad URL into production because it either requires a QA person to try clicking on each link in the page, or you need an automated link validation test.

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