Filtering IP traffic using a Java Filter - RemoteAddrFilter

I recently wrote a Java Filter, which is a replica of the org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteAddrValve implementation. It performs filtering based on comparing the requestors remote IP address against a set of regular expressions, configured in the Filter's initialization parameters. If an IP addresses is to be rejected it is rejected with a Forbidden HTTP response.

This provided useful because Valves are attached to the servlet container while a Filter can be mapped to any url pattern at the application level rather than at the container level.

GET THE CODE
Here is a link to the filter code. (RemoteAddrFilter.java)

This filter is configured by setting the allow and/or deny properties to a comma-delimited list of regular expressions to which the requestors remote address will be compared. Evaluation proceeds as follows:

• The filter initializes reading the allow and/or deny properties and converting them to a comma-delimited list of regular expressions to which the requester's remote address will be compared.
• If there are any deny expressions configured, the property will be compared to each such expression. If a match is found, this request will be rejected with a "Forbidden" HTTP response.
• If there are any allow expressions configured, the property will be compared to each such expression. If a match is found, this request will be allowed to pass through to the next Filter in the current pipeline.
• If one or more deny expressions was specified but no allow expressions, allow this request to pass through (because none of the deny expressions matched it).
  
• The request will be rejected with a "Forbidden" HTTP response.

The filter is configured the same way all Java Filter's. This filter takes two initial parameters. The value of those properties should be set to a comma-delimited list of regular expressions to which the requestors remote address will be compared.

CONFIGURE
The filter is added to your context via the web.xml. Below is an example configuration.

<filter>
   <filter-name>RemoteAddrFilter</filter-name>
   <filter-class>RemoteAddrFilter<filter-class>
   <init-param>
      <param-name>allow</param-name>
      <param-value>192.168.1.*</param-value>
   </init-param>
   <init-param>
      <param-name>deny</param-name>
      <param-value>163.122.111.*</param-value>
   </init-param>
</filter>


DEPENDENCIES
There is a dependency with Jakarta Regexp.