I actually have an answer instead of a question. I spent several hours
on a problem, and tried to find the answer online and couldn't. So I
thought I would write to the list with my answers.
I was trying to create a servlet that would stream a pdf to Internet
Explorer (IE6 on my PC). I was posting data to the servlet so that I
could plug values from my database into my dynamically created pdf.
I first wrote this code:
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
response)throws ServletException, IOException {
ServletOutputStream sos = null;
PrintWriter out = null;
//this builds the pdf using iText
ByteArrayOutputStream baos =
getMyPdf(request.getParameter("myDatabaseKey"));
if(baos == null){
response.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
writer.print(oRpc.getErrorMessage());
writer.close();
return;
}
sos = response.getOutputStream();
response.setContentType("application/pdf");
response.setHeader("Content-disposition","inline; filename=rpt.pdf;
size=" + String.valueOf(baos.size()));
response.setHeader("Cache-control", "must-revalidate");
response.setContentLength(baos.size());
baos.writeTo(sos);
sos.flush();
}
I am running this example on Websphere, and the first problem I
encountered was that in my WEB-INF I named the servlet's url "/rpt"
since the servlet is rpt.java. This caused the error "File does not
begin with '%PDF", it turns out that you need to define your url in your
WEB-INF so that it ends with ".pdf", and in my case, I defined my
servlet url as "/rpt.pdf".
The second problem I encountered was that IE6 tries to repost after it
sees that a pdf is being sent to it. This means that since I had only
coded the doPost, and left the doGet blank, I was seeing a blank page
instead of my pdf because on the second trip to the Websphere server,
IE6 calls doGet, which was returning no response. Once again, the fix
was pretty simple, and the code below worked just fine.
//this code runs when IE6 tries to do its second trip to the server,
and my database key has been preserved in the session
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
response)throws ServletException, IOException {
ServletOutputStream sos = null;
PrintWriter out = null;
HttpSession session = request.getSession();
//this builds the pdf using iText
ByteArrayOutputStream baos =
getMyPdf((String)session.getAttribute("myDatabaseKey"));
if(baos == null){
response.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
writer.print(oRpc.getErrorMessage());
writer.close();
return;
}
sos = response.getOutputStream();
response.setContentType("application/pdf");
response.setHeader("Content-disposition","inline; filename=rpt.pdf;
size=" + String.valueOf(baos.size()));
response.setHeader("Cache-control", "must-revalidate");
response.setContentLength(baos.size());
baos.writeTo(sos);
sos.flush();
}
//this code runs first on my initial post to the servlet so that the
database key is in a hidden form field
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
response)throws ServletException, IOException {
ServletOutputStream sos = null;
PrintWriter out = null;
//this builds the pdf using iText
ByteArrayOutputStream baos =
getMyPdf((String)request.getParameter("myDatabaseKey"));
if(baos == null){
response.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
writer.print(oRpc.getErrorMessage());
writer.close();
return;
}
//this is added so that the second trip to the server can use this
session variable to get my database key
HttpSession session = request.getSession();
session.setAttribute("myDatabaseKey",request.getParameter("myDatabaseKey"));
sos = response.getOutputStream();
response.setContentType("application/pdf");
response.setHeader("Content-disposition","inline; filename=rpt.pdf;
size=" + String.valueOf(baos.size()));
response.setHeader("Cache-control", "must-revalidate");
response.setContentLength(baos.size());
baos.writeTo(sos);
sos.flush();
}
I hope you can post this somewhere so that others won't have to spend a
whole day figuring out why their Microsoft software is broken...
Dave Ewing
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