Changing HTTP method in RequestDispatcher - java

How do I change HTTP method in javax,servlet.RequestDispatcher?
I have some old service APIs that support GET and POST, The new version supports DELETE method for removing a record which used to happen through POST earlier.
We are decommissioning old version APIs by setting RequestDispatcher.forward() for old end points (stop gap arrangement until clients change). everything was cool except this POST to DELETE mapping.
Any solution there for this problem without adding POST end point for delete operation in new API?>

Although I agree using the next layer after your servlets would be a better choice, this is interesting. It use to be common to wrap an incoming request to add request based functionality (IE: auth state, etc). The HttpServletRequestWrapper was used to accomplish this. You could do the following if you just need to change the method:
class PostDeleteAdapter extends HttpServletRequestWrapper {
public String getMethod(){ return "POST"; }
}
You may also change other aspects of the incoming request if you need to further adapt the request. This may play well with your servlet containers RequestDispatcher, however it's dependent upon the container entirely.

I think you can't do it using servlet API. You can do what you want creating a new request, processing it's response and sending it back through the original response (in the servlet).
Some http clientes might help you. See Apache HTTP client:
http://hc.apache.org/httpclient-3.x/methods/delete.html)

Related

Rest api - update single field of resource

Lets say I have rest endpoint for my Driver resource.
I have PUT method like this
myapi/drivers/{id}
{body of put method}
I need to add functionality which will allow to 'enable' and 'disable' driver
Is it good idea to create new endpoint for that like this?
PUT myapi/drivers/{id}/enable/false
or it is better to use existing endpoint ? One problem with using existing endpoint is that driver has lot's of fields(almost 30) and sending all those fields just for updating only 'enabled' or 'disable' driver is something overkill.
What do you think?
This is exactly what the HTTP method PATCH is made for. It is used in cases where the resource has many fields but you only want to update a few.
Just like with PUT, you send a request to myapi/drivers/{id}. However, unlike with PUT, you only send the fields you want to change in the request body.
Creating endpoints like myapi/drivers/{id}/enable is not very RESTful, as "enable" can't really be called a resource on its own.
For an example implementation of a Spring PATCH endpoint, please see this link.
Use PATCH Http metod to update one field
PATCH myapi/drivers/{id}/enable

Reading URL parameters when POST request with data arrives in Java Servlet

In Java servlets you read a JSON from a POST request e.g. via
new JSONObject(toString(httpRequest.getInputStream()))
Now additionally to the JSON I would like to specify parameters in the URL, they can be read via:
httpRequest.getParameterMap().get("someURLParam")
All is working (I'm using AJAX post requests and jetty for server side)
BUT
I'm concerned and confused if and when these two methods influence each other as the javadocs from javax.​servlet.​ServletRequest.getParamter(String) says:
If the parameter data was sent in the request body, such as occurs
with an HTTP POST request, then reading the body directly via
ServletRequest.getInputStream or ServletRequest.getReader can
interfere with the execution of this method.
What does it mean in my case? Or do they only interfere if content type is x-www-form-urlencoded? Or only if using getParameter and the method getParameterMap is fine?
If you are only using getParameter/getParameterMap, you will be fine. This is because, behind the scenes, those methods may call getInputStream. The spec says MAY because it's up to the implementation, so the behavior may vary from one container to another.
If your content isn't form encoded, or you are processing a GET request, etc., getParameter/getParameterMap only needs to get the parameters from the query string, so it makes sense that Jetty wouldn't read the body in those cases.

Grizzly HttpServer: Set permanent header for every response

I am using a Grizzly HttpServer and i want to add a specific header in every response. Specifically, i want to avoid CORS problems by adding an 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header.
So, ideally, i want something like this:
HttpServer server = GrizzlyServerFactory.createHttpServer(uri, crc);
server.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin" , "*");
Generally, i am looking for a solution that does not require that i have to manually insert this header in every request-response action.
Is there any way to do this?
As #alexey said, there is no way (from the current Grizzly Server version) to do this. If anyone finds something else that works, i will gladly confirm it as an accepted answer.
The best alternative that works quite well is to extend the 'ContainerResponseFilter' class and override the 'filter' method.
Here is an example for 1.x API
Here is an example for 2.x API (minor changes)

Jersey Client doesn't set Content-Length

I am using dropwizard for writing a webapp and also using Jersey Client as mentioned at
http://dropwizard.codahale.com/manual/client/#man-client-jersey
But it seems that whenever i try to do a post using the jersey client the remote webservice complains that Content-Length header is missing and fails.
public JobResponse createJob(JobRequest job) {
return jerseyClient.resource(URI.create(JOBS_URL))
.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE)
.header("Api-Key", job.getApiKey())
.post(JobResponse.class, job);
}
I have confirmed that the request does not contain the header and despite my best efforts I haven't been able to figure out why this is happening. Does anyone know if there is something that I am missing?
PS: The service that i am trying to hit is https://app.zencoder.com/docs/api/jobs/create
This is known "issue" and actually intended behavior.
Problem here is that entity is processed AFTER headers are written out to "the wire", thus Content-Length header value is not know when headers are serialized. If you need to have it, you have several options (with various complexity):
serialize entity by yourself; if you provide entity as string (or byte[]), Content-Length should be set.
create your own MessageBodyWriter, which would compute size of entity in getSize() method call.
there might be some other way how to do it, but I can't think of another right now.. hope it helps.
I was facing the same problem and the answer from Pavel didn't work out for me (I was using a FormMutiPart object).
I was using ApacheHttpClient4 instead of the regular com.sun.jersey.api.client.Client. Changing back to the Jersey Client, the Content-Lenght is calculated (at least in the case of FormMultiPart entity).

How to call servlet from java

I've a third-party servlet inside a JAR that I cannot change. I've extended that servlet and been using it normally as a servlet should be used, the client side makes an HTTP request that invokes my servlet.
But now the client wants an automatic service, that is, I will need to do some requests to that third party servlet from the same webapp where the servlet is.
I looked at the the third party servlet code but I didn't found a place to bypass the servlet because the HttpServletRequest and HttpServletResponse objects are passed from method to method... Basically it seems that I would need to re-implement all the third party code.
Solutions I found but do not satisfy me:
Call servlet from URL with HttpURLConnection: My common sense says that calling the third party servlet from a url is not the best way to
go, besides the overhead added, I don't want to expose the third party
servlet. Calling my servlet from a url also brings problems with
sessions and other things.
Call the doGet directly: This seems to be out of the question because there is no implementation for the HttpServletRequest and
HttpServletResponse.
Use jMock or something like that: Didn't explore this solution yet, but it seams wrong to use a test-driven library in the real
environment.
Anyone has an idea how to interact with that third party servlet?
EDIT:
Since my English is not very good and I'm finding difficult to explain myself here goes a schematic to try to explain better
EDIT2: After a meeting the third party maker they offer to isolate the methods I need to avoid calling the servlet. If you don't have the same luck I did check out both gigadot and BalusC answers.
If I understand your question correctly, you have implemented or have a third party servlet that generate the report for you.
Now what you want to do is to periodically generate the report and store in session so that when user want to get the report they can retrieve it using another servlet.
If this is the case then you want the task to be running periodically on your server. You will need some sort of task scheduler to run on your server and what the task does is just make a http request to your servlet (this can be http GET or POST).
Calling my servlet from a url also brings problems with sessions and other things.
If that's the sole problem, then just use the CookieManager to maintain the cookies (and thus also the session) in subsequent URLConnection calls.
// First set the default cookie manager.
CookieHandler.setDefault(new CookieManager(null, CookiePolicy.ACCEPT_ALL));
// All the following subsequent URLConnections will use the same cookie manager.
URLConnection connection = new URL(url).openConnection();
// ...
connection = new URL(url).openConnection();
// ...
connection = new URL(url).openConnection();
// ...
See also:
Using java.net.URLConnection to fire and handle HTTP requests
You could try to separate out your servlet logic into several phases. The entry point that takes the request/result, the action that processes parameters sent and generates the output.
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse rsp){
relay(rsp,act(req.getParameter("a"));
}
public static String act(String a){
return "You provided: " + a;
}
public static void relay(HttpServletResponse rsp, String content){
rsp.setResponseCode(200);
rsp.getOutputStream().write(content.getBytes());
}
This lets you call act(whatever) to do what you want, and then do what you want with the response. If returning a string is not enough, you could make any return type you want, probably something that could contain a list of headers, response code, and content template.

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