Allow only "prerequisite" forwarding URL to access a servlet

Question

Say for example I have a servlet named FooServlet, mapped to /foo.

There are two other servlets named BarServlet and CarServlet, mapepd to /bar and /car, respectively.

Now, if a user does a direct access to www.example.com/foo, they should be rejected. BUT if the request comes from a forward on /bar or /car, I will allow access to /foo.

Is this possible?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

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Yes, see this question: Java get referer URI?

You can check the referer header in the request to make sure they are coming from one of your other servlets.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:33

Community

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answered May 15 '14 at 03:27

Rick Mangi

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I deserve a downvote for asking this question, but this question clarifies the term "referer URI". Thank you for that good read. – Jekk May 15 '14 at 03:29
Yep. It's named appropriately. – Rick Mangi May 15 '14 at 03:31
Hey again. By the way, do you recommend putting this on filters? – Jekk May 15 '14 at 03:31
Not if you're only going to use it for this one case. It's pretty simple. – Rick Mangi May 15 '14 at 03:32
Nope. I have a "web" of decision making URLs. Means I have a lot of these. :D – Jekk May 15 '14 at 03:33
Then yes, I would store the data for what urls have required referers somewhere in a db table and use a filter to handle all of this. – Rick Mangi May 15 '14 at 03:34

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 15 '14 at 03:27

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You can use the request object to decide. For ex :

Use request.getContextPath() to fetch the "/foo", "/bar" or "/car" and decide whether to allow the access or not.

answered May 15 '14 at 03:27

Vimal Bera

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Allow only "prerequisite" forwarding URL to access a servlet

2 Answers2