My application has a GET mapping to all undefined paths.

@RestController
public class HelloController {

    @GetMapping("/**")
    public String hello() {
        return "hello";
    }

    @GetMapping("/")
    public String world() {
        return "world";
    }
}

In this case, the path / resolves to world, and all other paths resolve to hello, this is because Spring resolves more specific patterns first.

However, this does not work with files in resources/static like favicon.ico, the path returns "hello". If the /** path is not defined, then as expected, the favicon is returned. Spring seems to give the least preference to content in resources.

I would like to understand this behavior and get around it.