Why won't my servlet forward to my .jsp?

Question

Here is my code:

Index.html

<html>
    <head>
        <title>Web App Assignment 5</title>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    </head>
    <body>
        <div>
            <a href="listEmployees.jsp">View Employees</a>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Employees.java

class Employees {

        private String name;
        private int id;

        public Employees() {

        }
        public Employees(String name, int id){
            setName(name);
            setID(id);
        }

        public String getName(){
            return name;
        }

        public int getID(){
            return id;
        }

        public void setName(String name){
            this.name = name;
        }

        public void setID(int id) {
            this.id = id;
        }
    }

getEmployees.java

import java.io.IOException;
    import java.io.PrintWriter;
    import java.util.ArrayList;
    import java.util.List;
    import javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher;
    import javax.servlet.ServletException;
    import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
    import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
    import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
    import javax.servlet.http.HttpSession;

    public class getEmployees extends HttpServlet {

        protected void processRequest(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
                throws ServletException, IOException {
            response.setContentType("text/html;charset=UTF-8");

            try (PrintWriter out = response.getWriter()) {

            Employees emp1 = new Employees("Jim", 002);
            Employees emp2 = new Employees("Pam", 043);
            Employees emp3 = new Employees("Dwight", 013);
            Employees emp4 = new Employees("Kevin", 123);
            Employees emp5 = new Employees("Michael", 001);
            Employees emp6 = new Employees("Oscar", 033);

            List<Employees> employees = new ArrayList<Employees>();
            employees.add(emp1);
            employees.add(emp2);
            employees.add(emp3);
            employees.add(emp4);
            employees.add(emp5);
            employees.add(emp6);

            HttpSession session = request.getSession();
            session.setAttribute("empl", employees);

            RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request.getRequestDispatcher("listEmployees.jsp");
            dispatcher.forward(request, response);
                }
            }
    }

listEmployees.jsp

    <%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
    <%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
        <title>List of Employees </title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1><u> List of Employees </u> </h1>
        <table>
            <thead>
                <tr>

                <td>Employee Name</td> 
                <td></td>
                <td>Employee ID</td>
        </tr>
    </thead>
    <c:forEach items="${empl}" var="current">
        <tr>
          <td><c:out value="${empl}" /><td>
        </tr>
      </c:forEach>
</table>
</body>
</html>

I'm trying to get the index page to forward to the getEmployees servlet which is then supposed to forward the list of employees to the JSP and display the list of employees. I am unsure of why the servlet is not forwarding to the jsp. Any help would be much appreciated. Using Glassfish server.

can you seperate the code into code blocks each with the filename it belongs to ? — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 14:52
and remove "netbeans" from the title As I don't see the IDE relevant to the question here(what I think is relevant is the application server e.g GlassFish) — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 14:54
When I run the code as is, it shows the html "Employee name" and "Employee ID" from the listEmployees.jsp but doesn't show the array from the servlet, which is what I'm trying to show — Martin O'Connor, Feb 21 '17 at 15:37

bra_racing · Answer 1 · 2017-02-21T15:47:44.063

1

You must change the variable that you are printing in the foreach:

<c:forEach items="${empl}" var="current">
    <tr>
        <td><c:out value="${current.name}" /><td>
        <td><td>
        <td><c:out value="${current.id}" /><td>
    </tr>
</c:forEach>

edited Feb 21 '17 at 15:47

answered Feb 21 '17 at 15:40

bra_racing

622
1
8
32

Without changing the variable either – bra_racing Feb 21 '17 at 15:45
According to his words you are right, then question title is obviously wrong – Dmytro Grynets Feb 21 '17 at 15:55

rakwaht · Answer 2 · 2017-02-21T15:55:27.240

The HttpServlet has two important methods for handling the client's request:

1. doPost: in general handles requests coming from forms with HTTP POST method

2. doGet: handled requests coming from get method.

Now, your processRequest method, is just your code which is not bound (overridden) to anything.

You can easily call it from the above methods in order to not complicate the code in them thus the requests are handled in it.

So in order to use processRequest to handle your request you have to actually call it from one of those two methods.

Just add to your Servlet those methods that are going to take the requests and regardless the request type they will execute processRequest

protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
    throws ServletException, IOException {
  processRequest(request, response);
}

and

protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
    throws ServletException, IOException {
  processRequest(request, response);
}

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

0

processRequest is not answering any requests himself, it is just support method, it will be executed upon request if and only if it was called from doGet or doPost, which are actually responding to requests, if you want to both methods execute same code, just call that processRequest from doPost and doGet, more here

edited May 23 '17 at 12:00

Community

1
1

answered Feb 21 '17 at 15:38

Dmytro Grynets

923
11
29

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 21 '17 at 16:09

You have not shown the content of your web.xml. But from the description of the problem, it sounds like your container is not able to find any servlet which is mapped to a url pattern like /listEmployees.jsp. No, getEmployees is not the servlet which will be called because it doesn't override the doGet or doPost method. You have one method called processRequest. But the container doesn't know what that method is. It only knows doPost or doGet or a service method none of which is overridden by your getEmployees servlet. It looks like (without seeing your web.xml), the container is simply dispatching the request to the JSP because of the settings in your web.xml. Do the following things to fix your problem:

Correct the settings in your web.xml to map the url pattern /listEmployees.jsp to a servlet with a servlet class of getEmployees.
Override doGet method in your getEmployees servlet and call the processRequest method from it.

Why won't my servlet forward to my .jsp?

4 Answers4