How to get dynamic content in index.jsp page

[chintu reddy]

this is my first sevlet/jsp application.. so question might be dumb..

In my application, When the user opens the website, he will open index.jsp, now I have to get dynamic content inside this page. But the problem is that he is not requesting any servlet as of yet.. So how to get dynamic content in first page ?
one option was to, create index.jsp and redirect it to a servlet.. that servlet gets all the information needed on first page and then redirects that info to "home.jsp".. is this good option? or are there any other options?
thanks in advanve

[Bear Bibeault]

Redefine the "welcome file" to your servlet rather than index.jsp.

[chintu reddy]

thanks Bier..

how to do that? is that done in web.xml?

[chintu reddy]

ok got it.. <welcome-file-list> in web.xml.. thanks

[chintu reddy]

one more question...

is it a good practice to give servlet paths in hyperlinks? i mean menu bar in each page has links to other pages. when the user clicks that link, that page opens with dynamic content.. right now i am giving path to servlet(defined in web.xml) and redirecting from there to a jsp page.. is there any other way to do it?

[Bear Bibeault]

Why would you want to do it any other way?

[chintu reddy]

lets say, a user wanted to check his course list.. there is a link on the menu bar "my course list"... right now im linking that to "courselist.do" and that redirects to courselist.jsp page

once a user opens that page url is saved in web history in the browser.. in case some clever (or stupid) user instead of going through the link on the menubar, directly enters the url to the jsp page then the jsp page loads but it doesn't show any content as no content was drawn from servlet... i was thinking how to get around this..

[Bear Bibeault]

I missed the part about redirecting. Why is your controller redirecting rather than forwarding?

Your JSP pages should also be hidden under WEB-INF so that they cannot be addressed via the browser.

[chintu reddy]

oh sorry.. i meant forward only.. not redirect......

so all the jsp pages that are supposed to be open after an action should be put under web-inf.. right?

thanks a lot

[Bear Bibeault]

Not web-inf, WEB-INF.

If you forward rather than redirect, the address of the JSP is never exposed.

[chintu reddy]

Ok.. that solves my problem.. thanks a lot....

now my next quest is to learn tag libraries and use them to display content in jsps.. can you suggest me some good startup material.. i have absolutely no idea abt tag libraries.. very difficult to understand the working procedure from sun's tutorial...

[Bear Bibeault]

"abt"?

[chintu reddy]

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