going back

[Sarathy Srinivas]

Hi,
I have a problem with page redirection. On my site I have a page that can be reached through several other pages (change profile page). This page has several options changemail id, password .. etc. I need to find a way to redirect to the page where the change profile link was clicked .. i.e back to that page. (as a link or button, doesnt matter). Under normal circumstances i would be able to do this with the history.go(x) but as i cant predict how many pages back since the user can do many form submissions and redirections from the cahnge profile page. So, is there anyway to store the value of the previous page the moment i come to the change profile page or can i store the value of history.go() in some way..

Thanks in advance.

[William Brogden]

If the link to the change profile page is always a POST from a form you can use a hidden variable to let the profile page know how the user got there and thus provide for returning to the right page.
Bill

[Sarathy Srinivas]

@ William.. there are many ways to reach the page. Your method would involve doing this for all the links to that page. this is something that, though possible, im looking to avoid. Is there a way to check the request parameter? If so what method should i use?
[ February 18, 2008: Message edited by: Sarathy Srinivas ]

[Qussay Najjar]

Originally posted by Sarathy Srinivas:
@ William.. there are many ways to reach the page. Your method would involve doing this for all the links to that page. this is something that, though possible, im looking to avoid. Is there a way to check the request parameter? If so what method should i use?

[ February 18, 2008: Message edited by: Sarathy Srinivas ]

here is some code that I've applied in one of my applications,
you'll see the important parts of it:

link in page1.jsp

<a href="/editprofile.jsp?source=page1">Edit Your Profile</a>

link in page2.jsp

<a href="/editprofile.jsp?source=page2">Edit Your Profile</a>

and so forth..

in page editProfile.jsp

<form action="ProfileEditor" ....>

in servlet ProfileEditor inside doPost(request, response)

// the process you want
// and now the navigation part at the end
String dispatchURL="";
source = request.getParameter("source");
if( source.equals("page1") ) 
   dispatchURL="/page1.jsp";
else if( source.equals("page2") )
   dispatchURL="/page2.jsp";
 
RequestDispatcher rd = getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher(dispatchURL);
rd.forward(request,response);

Honestly speaking, I don't know if it's a professional way to deal
with such trick, but this is only what I did to solve it that time..
hope it helps...

[Qussay Najjar]

Originally posted by Qussay Najjar:

in page editProfile.jsp

<form action="ProfileEditor" ....>

sorry for my mistake, the code in quote should be like this:

<form action="ProfileEditor?source=<%=request.getParameter("source")%>" ...>