Is it possible to invoke a Servlet before showing index.jsp

Question

I need to do some pre-processing logic which reside in my Struts2 Action class, before showing index.jsp when user access my Java web application for the first time. I tried using the below snippet in web.xml but it failed:

web.xml:

<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>loginPage.action</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

To summarize, when user hits http://myjavawebap.com, first the struts2 action loginPage needs to be called and then the action should dispatch the default index.jsp file. Is there any way to achieve this?

Answer 1

Just redirect or forward to the loginPage in your index.jsp page and make index.jsp as the welcome-file.

Another solution could be to use a filter.

Answer 2

I guess i wanted to type filter servlet.

Answer 3

You might want to try a servlet filter for request preprocessing.

Also Struts 2 has a similar concept called Interceptors that might work for you in this case.