Redirect from servlet to EXTERNAL URL using POST

[sudharsan, varadharajan]

Hello All,
I am running in to a problem regarding which I would really appreciate some assistance. I am
using Visual Age for Java 3.5 for my Java IDE.
My problem is as follows:
1.) Browser issues a HTTP POST to a servlet.
2.) within the servlet, I have to re-direct to
a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT URL which is outside of my servlet Engine itself, like as below.
RequestDispatcher.forward("http://www.cnn.com?param1=value1");
RequestDispatcher.forward SEEMS TO BE WORKING
ONLY with RELATIVE URI's . How do I re-direct my
POST with my ORIGINAL REQUEST PARAMETERS, TO A URL WHICH IS COMPLETELY OUTSIDE OF MY APPLICATION
FROM WITHIN MY SERVLET???.
I am currently trying to get it to work using
HttpUrlConnection object but I have not had success till now.
Thanks in Advance,
SudharsanRequestDispatcher.forward SEEMS TO BE WORKING ONLY WITH RELATIVE URI's

[Joe Gilvary]

I think your requirements contradict one another.
A relative URL would be relative to the current
URL. An external URL will require the scheme prefix
(http, ftp, etc). Once you start a URL string with
the scheme, you will not have a relative URL.
HTH,
Joe

[William Brogden]

RequestDispatcher is tied to the local JVM and servlet engine so I don't think you can use it here.
How about this...
1. create a new HttpUrlConnection to that separate resource,
2. recreate the POST request and send it.
3. receive the response and relay the content through your servlet to the original request
Bill

[sudharsan, varadharajan]

Hello Joe,
I am sorry if I didn't make myself clear.
Yes! I am not dealing with a relative URI at all.
Iam dealing with a re-direct to an external URL
with protocol prefix "http", "host", "port" etc
for which I observed the RequestDispatcher cannot be used and so I was looking to see if others have found a working solution for this.
Thanks for replying back!.
Sudharsan.

[sudharsan, varadharajan]

Hello William Brogden,
Thanks for your reply.
I tried using HttpURLConnection as you said.
Now, there is a different problem.
The post parameter string originally before
using HttpURLConnection had characters like
%2B, %2F, %0A, %3D to signify the ascii values
for characters +, /, '\n', = respectively.
After doing the HttpURLConnection post in the
re-directed servlet, when I look at the request
parameter string I don't see %2B, %2F, %0A etc
but I see their decoded values of +, /, '\n',=
etc. I think, the HttpURLConnection is doing
some kind of URL Decoding behind the Scenes.
Is there any way to solve this Problem?.
Thanks,
Sudharsan.

[William Brogden]

It sounds like you need the URLEncoder class in the java.net package to re-encode those strings.
Bill

[Mike Curwen]

This post seems to have been re-started, so this is closed.

New one:
http://www.javaranch.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=007529