Does RequestDispatcher work over multiple webapps ?
I'm asking because I had a single webapp working fine that uses RequestDispatcher rather than redirects so state isnt lost when displaying error and feedback messages.
However I now need to split some functionality between two webapps, so initial call is made from a webpage hosted on webapp1, calls webapp2 which eventually returns user to a page hosted on webapp1.
Clearly if webapps and webapp2 were on different websites using RequestDispatcher would not be possible but is it if both webapps are deployed within the same instance of a servlet container (tomcat 7)
Update
Got the request dispatcher part to work as explained in answer but am unable to retrieve data put in my webapp2 which iss why Im using it
i.e
webapp2 called , does some processing and then dispatches to a jsp on webapp1
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException
{
HttpSession userSession = request.getSession(true);
String emailAddress = ......
String nextPage = /finish.jsp
userSession.setAttribute("DATA", emailAddress);
ServletContext otherContext = getServletContext().getContext("/webapp1");
otherContext.getRequestDispatcher(nextPage).forward(request, response);
}
webapp2 jsp file contains
...
<p>Email(<%=((String)session.getAttribute("DATA"))%>)</p>
...
but always displays null
Update 2 **
Im wondering if Im misunderstanding what crossContext="true" actually does . Does it make the same HttpSession availble in different webapps, or does it just make the ServletContext from one webap availble to another and hence allow one webapp to see the HttpSessions of another webapp ?
Im starting to think what Im doing is a bad idea as Ive always been keen to use vanilla servlet setups and never want to tie myself to a particular implementation. I think it might help if I explain why I flet the need to split the webapps in the first place.
I had a one webapp (webapp1), that was a website about a product I develop and code for purchasing that product using Google Checkout (now Google Wallet).
I then added created a new webapp for a new product (webapp2).
I then tried to add Google Checkout for new product into webapp2, but realised I couldnt do this easily because Google Checkout requires me to provide it with a url which it can call by application once it has processed payment so that I can then send user a license. The url was already set to a servlet in webapp1, but it wouldn't make sense for webapp1 to process payment s for product 2.
One option was to merge webpp1 and webapp2 into one webapp, but this goes against my general view of keeping things modular, it would also mean evey time I would want to make chnages for one product Id have to redeploy everything. It also meant big modifications to webapp1 which I really didnt want to modify as it was working and stable.
The alternative was to create webapp3 and then google url can point to this, and use this for processing purchases of product 1 and product 2 which is what Ive done. But the problem is when purchasing product 1 the starting page is in webapp1 , and once purchase has taken place I want to go back to a page in webapp1, but only webapp3 has the details of the user who has just made the purchase which I wanted to display on on the page in webapp1.
This is due to security reasons by default not possible. You need to configure Tomcat first to enable exposing the
ServletContext
of the current webapp to other webapps. This is to be done by setting thecrossContext
attribute ofcontext.xml
totrue
.Once done that, then you can use
ServletContext#getContext()
to obtain the other servlet context by its context path and finally use theRequestDispatcher
as obtained byServletContext#getRequestDispatcher()
the usual way.E.g.
I am not sure about different servlet container. But it works for same container by using getServletContext().getContext() method.
First you need to make changes in below file
(Windows) C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 7.0\conf\context.xml Set value of crossContext to true.
context.xml
Please note that crossContext="true".
Suppose you have two web applications with name InterServletComm1 and InterServletComm2 having servlets Servlet1 and Servlet1 in each web application respectively. Then the code in each servlets goes as follows:
Servlet1.java
Servlet2.java
Above code sends attribute name from InterServletComm1 and it is received in InterServletComm2. Please let me know if this answer is not clear.
Yes.
The first thing you need to do is get hold of a
ServletContext
for the other webapp. You do that withServletContext::getContext
on your ownServletContext
, passing the context path of the other webapp.Then, you simply do
ServletContext::getRequestDispatcher
as normal on the foreign context.I haven't actually tried this, but i 100% guarantee that it will work.