Where to kick this off?

[Pakawat Gibson LP]

I'm quite a kindergarten schoolboy in the world of JSP and Servlet.

I find many things really hard to manage, for example,

I create a simple form:
<form id="blah" name="blah" action="Beer.do" method="post">.....</form>

I follow the example in the world's best book called "Head First Servlets & JSP" and it runs just fine.
As long as I wouldn't press enter directly to the url '...../Beer.do' in the address bar, everything is still fine.

Suddenly I do press ENTER and it's broken. I already delegate doGet to doPost and it seems like all parameters were lost in space.

What's the best practice to manage the control flows like ENTER@ADDRESSBAR, REFRESH, F5, CTRL+F5 , to force the web app runs smooth as I want?

Any suggestion on books or just the few keywords about design patterns will be really appreciated.

Thanks
Max

[Brian Henk]

If you have an

<input type="submit" />

Inside your form, enter should submit the same as pressing the button.

The refresh / f5 problem is browser-related. Unfortunately, I am not sure you can control what the browser does on a reload. Just know that it will send the exact request as before.

EDIT:

I think I understand what you're asking. In the Beer.do servlet, you can add a doGet and forward to a jsp of your choice. That way when a user visits, it won't blow up.

As long as you understand that a GET request, handled through doGet will be used when a user types in an address or refreshes a page gotten to through a link and that doPost handles POST requests caused by submitting forms, then I think you have all the control you can get.

Sorry if my answer isn't really helpful, its a little hard to tell what you're asking.

[Bear Bibeault]

Be sure to properly control the caching of your responses. See the FAQ for details.