AVAJAVA Web Tutorials

A filter offers a useful way of performing filtered functionality in a JavaSW web application. Typically, filters do not generate content themselves, although in this example, the filter will generate some minimal content to show how it is called. A filter implements the javax.servlet.Filter interface. The primary filter functionality is implemented by the doFilter() method of the filter.

A filter is typically used to perform a particular piece of functionality either before or after the primary functionality of a web application is performed. As an example, if a request is made for a particular resource such as a servletW and a filter is used, the filter code may execute and then pass the user on to the servlet. As a further example, the filter might determine that the user does not have permissions to access a particular servlet, and it might send the user to an error page rather than to the requested resource.

Here we can see an example of a filter declared in web.xmlW. Notice that init parameters can be passed to a filter, just like they can be passed to a servlet. Notice that the filter-mapping has the url-pattern of /*. This routes all requests to the web application through the MyFilter filter.

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

	<filter>
		<filter-name>MyFilter</filter-name>
		<filter-class>com.cakes.MyFilter</filter-class>
		<init-param>
			<param-name>my-param</param-name>
			<param-value>my-param-value</param-value>
		</init-param>
	</filter>
	<filter-mapping>
		<filter-name>MyFilter</filter-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</filter-mapping>

	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>TestServlet</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>com.cakes.TestServlet</servlet-class>
	</servlet>
	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>TestServlet</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/test</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

	<welcome-file-list>
		<welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
	</welcome-file-list>

</web-app>

Here is code for a very basic servlet that will will access, the TestServlet class.

TestServlet.java

package com.cakes;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

public class TestServlet extends javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet implements javax.servlet.Servlet {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
		performTask(request, response);
	}

	protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException,
			IOException {
		performTask(request, response);
	}

	private void performTask(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException,
			IOException {
		response.setContentType("text/html");
		PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
		out.println("TestServlet says hi");
	}

}

Here is a filter, the MyFilter class. This filter will write content to the response, although this is not typical for a filter, since usually they pass content generation off to a servlet or a JSPW. This filter will display the value of the my-param init parameter, and it will also display the values of any request parameters.

MyFilter.java

package com.cakes;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.util.Enumeration;

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;

public class MyFilter implements Filter {

	FilterConfig filterConfig = null;

	public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
		this.filterConfig = filterConfig;
	}

	public void destroy() {
	}

	public void doFilter(ServletRequest servletRequest, ServletResponse servletResponse, FilterChain filterChain)
			throws IOException, ServletException {
		servletResponse.setContentType("text/html");
		
		PrintWriter out = servletResponse.getWriter();
		out.println("my-param (InitParameter): " + filterConfig.getInitParameter("my-param"));
		out.println("<br/><br/>Parameters:<br/>");
		Enumeration<String> parameterNames = servletRequest.getParameterNames();
		if (parameterNames.hasMoreElements()) {
			while (parameterNames.hasMoreElements()) {
				String name = parameterNames.nextElement();
				String value = servletRequest.getParameter(name);
				out.println("name:" + name + ", value: " + value + "<br/>");
			}
		} else {
			out.println("---None---<br/>");
		}
		out.println("<br/>Start Regular Content:<br/><hr/>");
		filterChain.doFilter(servletRequest, servletResponse);
		out.println("<br/><hr/>End Regular Content:<br/>");

	}

}

I also created a very basic JSP, the index.jsp:

index.jsp

index.jsp says hi

I created a filter-test project will the following structure:

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