Those seem like good modifications to me.

Cheers,

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: Vincent Massol [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 1:09 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Sending data to a servlet




----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 6:41 PM
Subject: RE: Sending data to a servlet


> Thanks for the reply
>
> > Question: can we put parameters in the URL when sending data
> > using the POST
> > method ? In that case, we could maybe use the getQueryString()
> > method (if it
> > doesn't call getInputStream()) ?
>
> With Tomcat you can definitely pass a query string when using POST, don't
> know about other servers but without checking the HTTP spec I would think
> they work also. I also don't see any reason for the server to call
> getInputStream in this case as the query string is passed as part of the
> URL.
>
> Reading the HTTP RFC, I can see nowhere in the spec that POST handlers
> should ignore the query string.
>

I checked with the Tomcat guys and it is valid to use HTTP params in the URL
when POSTing data.

> I think parsing the query string is the only realistic solution (without
> looking at the code). If I pass data as a serialized object, the
redirector
> has to use get[InputStream|Reader] to get the data, this will interfere
with
> my servlet calling getParameter. If the re-director calls getParameter
this
> will interfere with my servlet calling get[InputStream|Reader].
>

You're right. Let's do it in the URL. I'll modify Cactus to behave this way
first ...

> If this works then would the idea be to add support for add beginXXX
methods
> that take a WebRequest object that we could 'write' the input data to?

... then I propose to modify WebRequest :
* add a addParameter(String name, String value, String method) method where
method = {"POST" | "GET"}
* modify the behaviour of the existing addParameter(String name, String
value) so that it defaults to addParameter(String name, String value, "GET")
* add a setData(InputStream bodyData) method to pass data to write in the
HTTP request body. If setData() is used, then all added POST parameters will
be ignored
* force the method to POST if any POST parameters have been added
* add a setContentType(String contentType) method. Content type is
"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" by default. Question: is this needed ? I
have not looked at multi-part MIME yet.

What do you think ?
Thanks

>
> Kevin Jones
> Developmentor
> www.develop.com
>

-Vincent

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Vincent Massol [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: 08 October 2001 17:26
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: Sending data to a servlet
> >
> >
> > Hi Kevin,
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Kevin Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: "Cactus-User" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 3:49 PM
> > Subject: Sending data to a servlet
> >
> >
> > > I want to send data to a servlet that the servlet retrieves using
> > > req.getReader. I know that Cactus doesn't support this directly (and I
> > know
> > > there's an open todo :-) ),
> >
> > hehe ... :)
> >
> > I've tried to write a unit test for Cactus that would use getReader() as
I
> > didn't see why it would not work ... and it doesn't work ... ! My test
is
> > very simple:
> >
> >  public void beginGetReader(WebRequest theRequest)
> >  {
> >      theRequest.addParameter("test", "some body data");
> >   }
> >
> >  public void testGetReader() throws Exception
> >  {
> >      String buffer;
> >      StringBuffer body = new StringBuffer();
> >      BufferedReader reader = request.getReader();
> >      while ((buffer = reader.readLine()) != null) {
> >          body.append(buffer);
> >      }
> >      assertEquals("test=some body data", body.toString());
> >  }
> >
> > By default, Cactus sends the parameters using the POST method so
> > getReader()
> > should get the parameter. Ok, I know, if you need to send some raw data
> > (without the 'xxx = yyy' format) then it wouldn't work but it
> > would be easy
> > to add a new method for that.
> >
> > However, the above test fails and body.toString() is empty. Why ?
> > I believe
> > it is because, internally, Cactus sends other internal parameters in the
> > http request (such as the name of the test class, the method to call,
...)
> > and these parameters are extracted by the servlet redirector (using
> > request.getParameter()) _before_ the testGetReader() is called ... and
> > Servlet API doc says that for a given request, getParameter()
> > [which must be
> > using getInputStream() internally] or getReader() can be called
> > but not both
> > ... [for some reason, using Resin, it does not raise an exception, but
> > returns ""].
> >
> > .....
> >
> > This is a major issue as we absolutely need to pass (transparently) some
> > context data to the servlet redirector. If we want to be able to support
> > getReader() [and we do want that !], we need to find another way
> > of passing
> > our internal data .... A solution might be to continue to pass them in
the
> > body and extract them by hand [not using getParameter()] by calling
> > getReader() [but we will need to be careful not to read on the
> > data for the
> > test part  - we could also use a serialized java object]. This means
there
> > will be 2 cases: tests that uses getInputStream() and tests that uses
> > getReader() ...
> >
> > Question: can we put parameters in the URL when sending data
> > using the POST
> > method ? In that case, we could maybe use the getQueryString()
> > method (if it
> > doesn't call getInputStream()) ?
> >
> > To summarize:
> > * adding support for sending data to servlets is easy if the code
> > under test
> > is using getInputStream() to get that data
> > * adding support for sending data to servlets is difficult if the
> > code under
> > test is using getReader() to get that data
> >
> > > so can I do this 'outside' the scope of Cactus
> > > and still have the tests executed. I.e. can I use an
> > HttpUrlConnection (or
> > > similar) to talk to the re-direction proxy within my testXXX methods?
> >
> > hum ...
> > * the interface between the Cactus client and the Cactus server
> > parts is not
> > public, meaning it may change in the future (as demonstrated for
> > example by
> > the above analysis which will probably lead to a change),
> > * it would not even work for the reason explained above (getParameter()
is
> > called before your getReader() code).
> >
> > The only solution is to help us on Cactus correct this bug/limitation
you
> > have found ... ! ;-)
> >
> > Thanks for that !
> >
> > >
> > > Kevin Jones
> > > Developmentor
> > > www.develop.com
> > >
> >
> > -Vincent
> >
> > --
> > Vincent Massol, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > OCTO Technology, www.octo.com
> > Information System Architecture Consulting
> >
>
>

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