URL not showing the right address after using servlet request forwarding.

Question

Hi guys,

I am having a weird problem here, and I am really stuck, need to get this work badly.

so i have a page say index.jsp with a link say "a href=servlet?action=viewMenu". when I click on this link it will go to doGet() on my servlet and here is the code in my servlet.

 protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
                 String action = request.getParameter("action");
                   if(action.equals("viewMenu")){
                        address = "/viewAdminMenu.jsp";
                   }
                RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request.getRequestDispatcher(address);
                dispatcher.forward(request,response);
     }

So the above code works fine but after request forwarding, my browser shows the url as

localhost/project/servlet?action=viewMenu. (with http:// in the beginning)

I don't want the above url as I could not set the basic authentication with tomcat, what I need is

localhost/project/viewAdminMenu.jsp (with http:// in the beginning)

I have tried to find information about this but haven't been able to figure it out.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

If you want the browser to go to a different URL, you'll need to tell it to redirect, rather than doing a forward in the server. See the sendRedirect() method of HttpServletResponse.

Forward

• a forward is performed internally by the servlet
• the browser is completely unaware that it has taken place, so its original URL remains intact
• any browser reload of the resulting page will simple repeat the original request, with the original URL

Redirect

• a redirect is a two step process, where the web application instructs the browser to fetch a second URL, which differs from the original
• a browser reload of the second URL will not repeat the original request, but will rather fetch the second URL
• redirect is marginally slower than a forward, since it requires two browser requests, not one
• objects placed in the original request scope are not available to the second request

(From Java Practices.)