ColdFusion 2016 Broke My API (And How I Fixed It)

While on ColdFusion 9, I built a REST API for our an application at work. Everything was working fine until we upgraded to ColdFusion 2016. When I went to test the API, I got an HTTP 500 error. The Apache log gave me no clues to what was happening, so my next stop was the ColdFusion logs. In the exception log, I found this:

Error","ajp-nio-8015-exec-9","03/09/17","07:22:12",,"Application  could not be found. The specific sequence of files included or processed is: '''' "
javax.servlet.ServletException: Application  could not be found.
        at coldfusion.rest.servlet.CFRestServlet.invoke(CFRestServlet.java:512)
        at coldfusion.rest.servlet.RestFilter.invoke(RestFilter.java:60)
        at coldfusion.filter.ExceptionFilter.invoke(ExceptionFilter.java:94)
        ...

A quick Google search did not reveal much. However, the fact that it was calling the CFResetServlet gave me an idea. What if the /api directory now had special meaning? So I renamed the /api directory to /API-TEST and sure enough my code was working again.
I found the solution in the web.xml file:

    <servlet-mapping id="coldfusion_mapping_16">
        <servlet-name>CFRestServlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/api/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

This mapping is forcing everything in the /api directory to be processed by the ColdFusion REST service. To fix this, I simply commented out this section of the configuration and restarted the ColdFusion service.

    <--
    <servlet-mapping id="coldfusion_mapping_16">
        <servlet-name>CFRestServlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/api/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
    -->