Making Request object available to stream

[Alan Peltz]

I am trying to capture a snapshot of the HTML of a page at a certain stage. If I call the struts action class from a browser, this page comes up perfectly with the correct values where the JSP write tags resolved. When I try calling this struts action class from inside a different action class and capture the HTML in a buffer, the values that should be in the request object are not so the write tags produce nothing. I have tried calling this code snippet from a different JSP where the correct formbeans were in the request object and it still didn't produce the values. Here is my code snippet:

StringBuffer fullReportPath = new StringBuffer();
fullReportPath.append("http://devServer1:9080/ofroiWeb/FinalForm.do");

URL url = new URL(fullReportPath.toString());
BufferedReader br = null;

br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(url.openStream()));

StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();

String str;
while ((str = br.readLine()) != null) {
buffer.append(str);
}

// Close the input stream and return bytes
br.close();


I have been thinking about a workaround, where I put the formbean in the session and then change the JSP to look in the session for it rather than the request object, but I don't want to do this unless I have to.

Thanks,
Alan

[Alan Peltz]

Just in case anyone else was wondering, I found a solution to this on another forum.

RequestDispatcher rd = request.getRequestDispatcher("ofroiWeb/FinalForm.do");
// wrap the original response wrapper in a buffered response
BufferedHttpResponseWrapper buffResponse = new BufferedHttpResponseWrapper(response);

try {
// use the request dispatcher to invoke our page
// the response will be written into the buffResponse object.
rd.include(request, buffResponse);
} catch (ServletException e) {
throw e;
}

// retrieve the result
byte[] byteResult = buffResponse.getBuffer();
String result = new String(byteResult);

StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
buffer.append(result);

This solution worked like a charm. The guy that posted it said it only works if this call happens on the same server as the original call. BufferedHttpResponseWrapper is a class I had to create. I found good samples for this class at http://www.porcupyne.org/docs/browse_source/JavaXslt/com/oreilly/javaxslt/util/BufferedHttpResponseWrapper.java.html.

As you see I don't use a URL object at all. I use a RequestDispatcher instead. I use the BufferedHttpResponseWrapper so I could update the response object. I really don't have my mind completely wrapped around this solution, but it works so I'm happy.