SERVLETS CLIENT HTTP REQUESTS

When a browser requests for a web page, it sends lot of information to the web server which can not be read directly because this information travel as a part of header of HTTP request. You can check HTTP Protocol for more information on this.

Following is the important header information which comes from browser side and you would use very frequently in web programming:

Header	Description
Accept	This header specifies the MIME types that the browser or other clients can handle. Values of image/png or image/jpeg are the two most common possibilities.
Accept-Charset	This header specifies the character sets the browser can use to display the information. For example ISO-8859-1.
Accept-Encoding	This header specifies the types of encodings that the browser knows how to handle. Values of gzip or compress are the two most common possibilities.
Accept-Language	This header specifies the client's preferred languages in case the servlet can produce results in more than one language. For example en, en-us, ru, etc.
Authorization	This header is used by clients to identify themselves when accessing password-protected Web pages.
Connection	This header indicates whether the client can handle persistent HTTP connections. Persistent connections permit the client or other browser to retrieve multiple files with a single request. A value of Keep-Alivemeans that persistent connections should be used
Content-Length	This header is applicable only to POST requests and gives the size of the POST data in bytes.
Cookie	This header returns cookies to servers that previously sent them to the browser.
Host	This header specifies the host and port as given in the original URL.
If-Modified-Since	This header indicates that the client wants the page only if it has been changed after the specified date. The server sends a code, 304 which means Not Modified header if no newer result is available.
If-Unmodified-Since	This header is the reverse of If-Modified-Since; it specifies that the operation should succeed only if the document is older than the specified date.
Referer	This header indicates the URL of the referring Web page. For example, if you are at Web page 1 and click on a link to Web page 2, the URL of Web page 1 is included in the Referer header when the browser requests Web page 2.
User-Agent	This header identifies the browser or other client making the request and can be used to return different content to different types of browsers.

Methods to read HTTP Header:

There are following methods which can be used to read HTTP header in your servlet program. These methods are available with HttpServletRequest object.

S.N.	Method & Description
1	Cookie[] getCookies() Returns an array containing all of the Cookie objects the client sent with this request.
2	Enumeration getAttributeNames() Returns an Enumeration containing the names of the attributes available to this request.
3	Enumeration getHeaderNames() Returns an enumeration of all the header names this request contains.
4	Enumeration getParameterNames() Returns an Enumeration of String objects containing the names of the parameters contained in this request.
5	HttpSession getSession() Returns the current session associated with this request, or if the request does not have a session, creates one.
6	HttpSession getSession(boolean create) Returns the current HttpSession associated with this request or, if if there is no current session and create is true, returns a new session.
7	Locale getLocale() Returns the preferred Locale that the client will accept content in, based on the Accept-Language header
8	Object getAttribute(String name) Returns the value of the named attribute as an Object, or null if no attribute of the given name exists.
9	ServletInputStream getInputStream() Retrieves the body of the request as binary data using a ServletInputStream.
10	String getAuthType() Returns the name of the authentication scheme used to protect the servlet, for example, "BASIC" or "SSL," or null if the JSP was not protected
11	String getCharacterEncoding() Returns the name of the character encoding used in the body of this request.
12	String getContentType() Returns the MIME type of the body of the request, or null if the type is not known.
13	String getContextPath() Returns the portion of the request URI that indicates the context of the request.
14	String getHeader(String name) Returns the value of the specified request header as a String.
15	String getMethod() Returns the name of the HTTP method with which this request was made, for example, GET, POST, or PUT.
16	String getParameter(String name) Returns the value of a request parameter as a String, or null if the parameter does not exist.
17	String getPathInfo() Returns any extra path information associated with the URL the client sent when it made this request.
18	String getProtocol() Returns the name and version of the protocol the request.
19	String getQueryString() Returns the query string that is contained in the request URL after the path.
20	String getRemoteAddr() Returns the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the client that sent the request.
21	String getRemoteHost() Returns the fully qualified name of the client that sent the request.
22	String getRemoteUser() Returns the login of the user making this request, if the user has been authenticated, or null if the user has not been authenticated.
23	String getRequestURI() Returns the part of this request's URL from the protocol name up to the query string in the first line of the HTTP request.
24	String getRequestedSessionId() Returns the session ID specified by the client.
25	String getServletPath() Returns the part of this request's URL that calls the JSP.
26	String[] getParameterValues(String name) Returns an array of String objects containing all of the values the given request parameter has, or null if the parameter does not exist.
27	boolean isSecure() Returns a boolean indicating whether this request was made using a secure channel, such as HTTPS.
28	int getContentLength() Returns the length, in bytes, of the request body and made available by the input stream, or -1 if the length is not known.
29	int getIntHeader(String name) Returns the value of the specified request header as an int.
30	int getServerPort() Returns the port number on which this request was received.

HTTP Header Request Example:

Following is the example which uses getHeaderNames() method of HttpServletRequest to read the HTTP header infromation. This method returns an Enumeration that contains the header information associated with the current HTTP request.

Once we have an Enumeration, we can loop down the Enumeration in the standard manner, usinghasMoreElements() method to determine when to stop and using nextElement() method to get each parameter name.

// Import required java libraries
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.util.*;
 
// Extend HttpServlet class
public class DisplayHeader extends HttpServlet {
 
  // Method to handle GET method request.
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException
  {
      // Set response content type
      response.setContentType("text/html");
 
      PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
   String title = "HTTP Header Request Example";
      String docType =
      "<!doctype html public \"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 " +
      "transitional//en\">\n";
      out.println(docType +
        "<html>\n" +
        "<head><title>" + title + "</title></head>\n"+
        "<body bgcolor=\"#f0f0f0\">\n" +
        "<h1 align=\"center\">" + title + "</h1>\n" +
        "<table width=\"100%\" border=\"1\" align=\"center\">\n" +
        "<tr bgcolor=\"#949494\">\n" +
        "<th>Header Name</th><th>Header Value(s)</th>\n"+
        "</tr>\n");
 
      Enumeration headerNames = request.getHeaderNames();
      
      while(headerNames.hasMoreElements()) {
         String paramName = (String)headerNames.nextElement();
         out.print("<tr><td>" + paramName + "</td>\n");
         String paramValue = request.getHeader(paramName);
         out.println("<td> " + paramValue + "</td></tr>\n");
      }
      out.println("</table>\n</body></html>");
  }
  // Method to handle POST method request.
  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
                     HttpServletResponse response)
      throws ServletException, IOException {
     doGet(request, response);
  }
}

Now calling the above servlet would generate following result:

HTTP Header Request Example

Header Name	Header Value(s)
accept	*/*
accept-language	en-us
user-agent	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)
accept-encoding	gzip, deflate
host	localhost:8080
connection	Keep-Alive
cache-control	no-cache

SERVLETS FORM DATA

You must have come across many situations when you need to pass some information from your browser to web server and ultimately to your backend program. The browser uses two methods to pass this information to web server. These methods are GET Method and POST Method.

GET method:

The GET method sends the encoded user information appended to the page request. The page and the encoded information are separated by the ? character as follows:

http://www.test.com/hello?key1=value1&key2=value2

The GET method is the defualt method to pass information from browser to web server and it produces a long string that appears in your browser's Location:box. Never use the GET method if you have password or other sensitive information to pass to the server. The GET method has size limtation: only 1024 characters can be in a request string.

This information is passed using QUERY_STRING header and will be accessible through QUERY_STRING environment variable and Servlet handles this type of requests using doGet() method.

POST method:

A generally more reliable method of passing information to a backend program is the POST method. This packages the information in exactly the same way as GET methods, but instead of sending it as a text string after a ? in the URL it sends it as a separate message. This message comes to the backend program in the form of the standard input which you can parse and use for your processing. Servlet handles this type of requests using doPost() method.

Reading Form Data using Servlet:

Servlets handles form data parsing automatically using the following methods depending on the situation:

• getParameter(): You call request.getParameter() method to get the value of a form parameter.
• getParameterValues(): Call this method if the parameter appears more than once and returns multiple values, for example checkbox.
• getParameterNames(): Call this method if you want a complete list of all parameters in the current request.

GET Method Example Using URL:

Here is a simple URL which will pass two values to HelloForm program using GET method.

http://localhost:8080/HelloForm?first_name=ZARA&last_name=ALI

Below is HelloForm.java servlet program to handle input given by web browser. We are going to usegetParameter() method which makes it very easy to access passed information:

// Import required java libraries
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;

// Extend HttpServlet class
public class HelloForm extends HttpServlet {
 
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException
  {
      // Set response content type
      response.setContentType("text/html");

      PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
   String title = "Using GET Method to Read Form Data";
      String docType =
      "<!doctype html public \"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 " +
      "transitional//en\">\n";
      out.println(docType +
                "<html>\n" +
                "<head><title>" + title + "</title></head>\n" +
                "<body bgcolor=\"#f0f0f0\">\n" +
                "<h1 align=\"center\">" + title + "</h1>\n" +
                "<ul>\n" +
                "  <li><b>First Name</b>: "
                + request.getParameter("first_name") + "\n" +
                "  <li><b>Last Name</b>: "
                + request.getParameter("last_name") + "\n" +
                "</ul>\n" +
                "</body></html>");
  }
}

Assuming your environment is setup properly, compile HelloForm.java as follows:

$ javac HelloForm.java

If everything goes fine, above compilation would produce HelloForm.class file. Next you would have to copy this class file in <Tomcat-installation-directory>/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes and create following entries in web.xml file located in <Tomcat-installation-directory>/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>HelloForm</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>HelloForm</servlet-class>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>HelloForm</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/HelloForm</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

Now type http://localhost:8080/HelloForm?first_name=ZARA&last_name=ALI in your browser's Location:box and make sure you already started tomcat server, before firing above command in the browser. This would generate following result:

Using GET Method to Read Form Data First Name: ZARA Last Name: ALI

GET Method Example Using Form:

Here is a simple example which passes two values using HTML FORM and submit button. We are going to use same Servlet HelloForm to handle this imput.

<html>
<body>
<form action="HelloForm" method="GET">
First Name: <input type="text" name="first_name">
<br />
Last Name: <input type="text" name="last_name" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Keep this HTML in a file Hello.htm and put it in <Tomcat-installation-directory>/webapps/ROOT directory. When you would access http://localhost:8080/Hello.htm, here is the actual output of the above form.

First Name:  
Last Name:  

Try to enter First Name and Last Name and then click submit button to see the result on your local machine where tomcat is running. Based on the input provided, it will generate similar result as mentioned in the above example.

---

POST Method Example Using Form:

Let us do little modification in the above servlet, so that it can handle GET as well as POST methods. Below is HelloForm.java servlet program to handle input given by web browser using GET or POST methods.

// Import required java libraries
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;

// Extend HttpServlet class
public class HelloForm extends HttpServlet {
 
  // Method to handle GET method request.
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException
  {
      // Set response content type
      response.setContentType("text/html");

      PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
   String title = "Using GET Method to Read Form Data";
      String docType =
      "<!doctype html public \"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 " +
      "transitional//en\">\n";
      out.println(docType +
                "<html>\n" +
                "<head><title>" + title + "</title></head>\n" +
                "<body bgcolor=\"#f0f0f0\">\n" +
                "<h1 align=\"center\">" + title + "</h1>\n" +
                "<ul>\n" +
                "  <li><b>First Name</b>: "
                + request.getParameter("first_name") + "\n" +
                "  <li><b>Last Name</b>: "
                + request.getParameter("last_name") + "\n" +
                "</ul>\n" +
                "</body></html>");
  }
  // Method to handle POST method request.
  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
                     HttpServletResponse response)
      throws ServletException, IOException {
     doGet(request, response);
  }
}

Now compile, deploy the above Servlet and test it using Hello.htm with the POST method as follows:

<html>
<body>
<form action="HelloForm" method="POST">
First Name: <input type="text" name="first_name">
<br />
Last Name: <input type="text" name="last_name" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Here is the actual output of the above form, Try to enter First and Last Name and then click submit button to see the result on your local machine where tomcat is running.

First Name:  
Last Name:  

Based on the input provided, it would generate similar result as mentioned in the above examples.

---

Passing Checkbox Data to Servlet Program

Checkboxes are used when more than one option is required to be selected.

Here is example HTML code, CheckBox.htm, for a form with two checkboxes

<html>
<body>
<form action="CheckBox" method="POST" target="_blank">
<input type="checkbox" name="maths" checked="checked" /> Maths
<input type="checkbox" name="physics"  /> Physics
<input type="checkbox" name="chemistry" checked="checked" /> 
                                                Chemistry
<input type="submit" value="Select Subject" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

The result of this code is the following form

 Maths  Physics  Chemistry 

Below is CheckBox.java servlet program to handle input given by web browser for checkbox button.

// Import required java libraries
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;

// Extend HttpServlet class
public class CheckBox extends HttpServlet {
 
  // Method to handle GET method request.
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException
  {
      // Set response content type
      response.setContentType("text/html");

      PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
   String title = "Reading Checkbox Data";
      String docType =
      "<!doctype html public \"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 " +
      "transitional//en\">\n";
      out.println(docType +
                "<html>\n" +
                "<head><title>" + title + "</title></head>\n" +
                "<body bgcolor=\"#f0f0f0\">\n" +
                "<h1 align=\"center\">" + title + "</h1>\n" +
                "<ul>\n" +
                "  <li><b>Maths Flag : </b>: "
                + request.getParameter("maths") + "\n" +
                "  <li><b>Physics Flag: </b>: "
                + request.getParameter("physics") + "\n" +
                "  <li><b>Chemistry Flag: </b>: "
                + request.getParameter("chemistry") + "\n" +
                "</ul>\n" +
                "</body></html>");
  }
  // Method to handle POST method request.
  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
                     HttpServletResponse response)
      throws ServletException, IOException {
     doGet(request, response);
  }
}

For the above example, it would display following result:

Reading Checkbox Data Maths Flag : : on Physics Flag: : null Chemistry Flag: : on

---

Reading All Form Parameters:

Following is the generic example which uses getParameterNames() method of HttpServletRequest to read all the available form parameters. This method returns an Enumeration that contains the parameter names in an unspecified order.

Once we have an Enumeration, we can loop down the Enumeration in the standard manner, usinghasMoreElements() method to determine when to stop and using nextElement() method to get each parameter name.

// Import required java libraries
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.util.*;

// Extend HttpServlet class
public class ReadParams extends HttpServlet {
 
  // Method to handle GET method request.
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
                    HttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException
  {
      // Set response content type
      response.setContentType("text/html");

      PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
   String title = "Reading All Form Parameters";
      String docType =
      "<!doctype html public \"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 " +
      "transitional//en\">\n";
      out.println(docType +
        "<html>\n" +
        "<head><title>" + title + "</title></head>\n" +
        "<body bgcolor=\"#f0f0f0\">\n" +
        "<h1 align=\"center\">" + title + "</h1>\n" +
        "<table width=\"100%\" border=\"1\" align=\"center\">\n" +
        "<tr bgcolor=\"#949494\">\n" +
        "<th>Param Name</th><th>Param Value(s)</th>\n"+
        "</tr>\n");

      Enumeration paramNames = request.getParameterNames();
      
      while(paramNames.hasMoreElements()) {
         String paramName = (String)paramNames.nextElement();
         out.print("<tr><td>" + paramName + "</td>\n<td>");
         String[] paramValues =
                request.getParameterValues(paramName);
         // Read single valued data
         if (paramValues.length == 1) {
           String paramValue = paramValues[0];
           if (paramValue.length() == 0)
             out.println("<i>No Value</i>");
           else
             out.println(paramValue);
         } else {
             // Read multiple valued data
             out.println("<ul>");
             for(int i=0; i < paramValues.length; i++) {
                out.println("<li>" + paramValues[i]);
             }
             out.println("</ul>");
         }
      }
      out.println("</tr>\n</table>\n</body></html>");
  }
  // Method to handle POST method request.
  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
                     HttpServletResponse response)
      throws ServletException, IOException {
     doGet(request, response);
  }
}

Now, try above servlet with the following form:

<html>
<body>
<form action="ReadParams" method="POST" target="_blank">
<input type="checkbox" name="maths" checked="checked" /> Maths
<input type="checkbox" name="physics"  /> Physics
<input type="checkbox" name="chemistry" checked="checked" /> Chem
<input type="submit" value="Select Subject" />
</form>
</body>
</html>

Now calling servlet using above form would generate following result:

Reading All Form Parameters

Param Name	Param Value(s)
maths	on
chemistry	on

You can try above servlet to read any other form's data which is having other objects like text box, radio button or drop down box etc.