sendRedirect vs Foward

[Leonardo Pilatti]

Does anyone knows the diference between RequestDispatcher.foward and HttpServletResponse.sendRedirect?
I mean in any terms (performance, funcionability, etc).
thanks in advice
Leonardo Pilatti

[Bear Bibeault]

In a nutshell; a forward routes the request instance directly to the specified resource, while a redirect causes the browser to make a new request to the specified resource.
There are other nuances, but the main difference is that the foward takes place in the context of a single request (meaning that any request attributes you have placed on the request remain intact), versus the redirect which spawns a new request.
hth,
bear
[ December 03, 2002: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]

[Isaias C. Barroso]

Hi,
With RequestDispatche().foward(), you can call only resources of your server.
With HttpServletResponse.sendRedirect, you can call resources out of you server. Example:
response.sendRedirect("http://site.com")
By

[Leonardo Pilatti]

Thanks Isaias and Bibeault

[Mark Stein]

Two other things to keep in mind...
forward takes the argument (ServletRequest, ServletResponse) so parameters, session, etc. can be passed.
sendRedirect doesn't pass anything with it (unless you write it onto the end of the URL).
Also, forward is transparent to the browser, while sendRedirect isn't.
MS