How to insert JSF page rendering time and response size into the page itself, at least partially?

Question

I realize it's a chicken and egg problem and that it's not possible to accurately resolve the time it took to render a page (or the size of response) and insert that number into the page itself without affecting either measure. Nevertheless, I'm looking for a way to insert either number partially in a page of a JSF/Facelets/Seam application.

E.g., at the bottom of a .jsf page somewhere:

<!-- page size: 10.3Kb -->
<!-- render time: 0.2s -->

I've come across JSFUnit's JSFTimer, which is really handy. However, the phase listener approach doesn't allow the results of RENDER_RESPONSE phase to be inserted into the page. Not sure how to access the size of the response encoded so far either.

Is there a quick and dirty way to hook up to some sort of post-processing event at or after the end of RENDER_RESPONSE and to inject both numbers into the page about to be rendered? One way of approaching this is perhaps through servlet filters, but I'm looking for something simpler; perhaps a trick with Seam or Facelets...

Thanks,
-A

Answer 1

Try adding the values as request attributes (request.setAttribute(..) and access them using the ${attrName} syntax in the page. I'm in no way sure it will work, but give it a try.

Answer 2

Or have an asynch Javascript call that gets the response time and size from the server after its ready? Treat it like a callback to be performed after the page is done loading and the values are ready to insert.

Answer 3

This is a perfect use case for the Apache Commons IO CountingOutputStream. You need to create a Filter which uses HttpServletResponseWrapper to replace the OutputStream of the response with this one and replaces the Writer as well which should wrap the wrapped OutputStream. Then get hold of the HttpServletResponseWrapper instance in the request scope so that you can get the getByteCount() from the CountingOutputStream.

Here's a kickoff example of the CountingFilter:

public class CountingFilter implements Filter {

    @Override
    public void init(FilterConfig arg0) throws ServletException {
        // NOOP.
    }

    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, final ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
        HttpServletResponse httpres = (HttpServletResponse) response;
        CountingServletResponse counter = new CountingServletResponse(httpres);
        HttpServletRequest httpreq = (HttpServletRequest) request;
        httpreq.setAttribute("counter", counter);
        chain.doFilter(request, counter);
        counter.flushBuffer(); // Push the last bits containing HTML comment.
    }

    @Override
    public void destroy() {
        // NOOP.
    }

}

The CountingServletResponse:

public class CountingServletResponse extends HttpServletResponseWrapper {

    private final long startTime;
    private final CountingServletOutputStream output;
    private final PrintWriter writer;

    public CountingServletResponse(HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException {
        super(response);
        startTime = System.nanoTime();
        output = new CountingServletOutputStream(response.getOutputStream());
        writer = new PrintWriter(output, true);
    }

    @Override
    public ServletOutputStream getOutputStream() throws IOException {
        return output;
    }

    @Override
    public PrintWriter getWriter() throws IOException {
        return writer;
    }

    @Override
    public void flushBuffer() throws IOException {
        writer.flush();
    }

    public long getElapsedTime() {
        return System.nanoTime() - startTime;
    }

    public long getByteCount() throws IOException {
        flushBuffer(); // Ensure that all bytes are written at this point.
        return output.getByteCount();
    }

}

The CountingServletOutputStream:

public class CountingServletOutputStream extends ServletOutputStream {

    private final CountingOutputStream output;

    public CountingServletOutputStream(ServletOutputStream output) {
        this.output = new CountingOutputStream(output);
    }

    @Override
    public void write(int b) throws IOException {
        output.write(b);
    }

    @Override
    public void flush() throws IOException {
        output.flush();
    }

    public long getByteCount() {
        return output.getByteCount();
    }

}

You can use it in any (even non-JSF) page as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html 
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" 
    xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"&gt;
    <h:head>
        <title>Counting demo</title>
    </h:head>
    <h:body>
        <h1>Hello World</h1>
    </h:body>
</html>
<!-- page size: #{counter.byteCount / 1000}KB -->
<!-- render time: #{counter.elapsedTime / 1000000}ms -->