Best strategy to send search parameters to pagination method

[Joseph Sweet]

I am writing a pagination method for a search form. The user will fill out the form, stating according to which parameters they want to search to be performed (there are about 20 parameters), and then if there are more results than could fit into one page, they will get the 10 first results with an index to let them skip to the next pages (like they do in Google search).

I am trying to figure out what is the best way to keep the search parameters between the result pages... URL (get) parameters, or session parameters?
Or do I have other ways to do it in the Spring framework?

[Craig Walls]

I don't know if it's the *best* way, but the way I often do it (and the way I've seen many others do it) is to just carry the search query along as request parameters between pages.

I wouldn't be inclined to keep them in the session...once the user hops off of your search results page, now you've got info in the session that won't be cleaned out.

[Joseph Sweet]

You can carry the parameters with a Get or Post request. Which one would you choose?

Regarding the session - there's an option to delete some variables when they time out.