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EDIT: changed file name to 'follow-up.jsp' for clarity.

This is a shorter, and hopefully better version of a longer question I posted earlier today (link: Java web development: transfer control from one servlet to another while passing the request object).

I have a form that is POST-ed upon submit. In the corresponding servlet to which the POST action is done, I want to show either the form page again or a follow-up page, depending on whether validation succeeds. BOTH the form page AND the follow-up page need the form data submitted by the user; the form page needs it to re-populate the form fields, and the follow-up page needs it to show some of this data (for example, to have the user double-check that it is correct). Therefore, I want the request object containing the submitted data to be available to BOTH pages.

Forwarding back to the form is not a problem:

RequestDispatcher rd = getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher("/form.jsp"); rd.forward(request, response);

But how do I reach the follow-up page (say, follow-up.jsp) in such a way that the request object containing the submitted form data is still accessible in that follow-up page?

The following doesn’t seem to work:

response.sendRedirect("/MyProject/follow-up.jsp");

This is because if “name” is a form parameter that was assigned to an attribute of the request object in the form handling servlet, with this attribute conveniently also being called "name", then the following line in follow-up.jsp:

Your name is: ${name}.

does NOT print the user-submitted name (instead it prints nothing, i.e. only “Your name is:”). In other words, the attributes of the original request object are no longer available in follow-up.jsp. This makes sense in that response.sendRedirect triggers a new HTTP-request (with its own request and response objects). But is not what I want.

Another (secondary) concern is that sendRedirect is unable to issue POST-requests (it only uses GET; see [link] response.sendRedirect() from Servlet to JSP does not seem to work).

EDIT: Also, I realise I could actually use:

rd.forward(request, response);

for BOTH requests. However, that would result in both pages having the same URL showing in the address bar (i.e. the name of the routing servlet, like "...../Register"). And that is definitely bad, because the form page and the follow-up are completely different pages; the follow-up page has little to do with the form (except for displaying some of the submitted form data).

Thanks.

Community
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Holland
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1 Answers1

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In this case I believe you need to store the data not in request, but in a conversation scope....or in the session scope...regarding redirection not supporting post...then ideally all redirections by definition should be get requests only.....if you want to redirect using a a POST request please re-evaluate your approach...

prashant
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