streaming pdfs through servlet...

[Chris Gross]

This is my first post to this list.  Hi.

I've written a quick little servlet to stream pdf files from my database to
the browser but I'm encountering a strange little problem.  The first time I
call the servlet the page loads (I can see adobe's little plugin
initializing) but nothing ever displays.  All I see is a whitespace in the
browser.  But if I then immediately hit the refresh button then the pdf
shows up.  Has anyone ever seen anything like this before?  I'm not even
sure where the problem lays, i.e. with the plugin, with the browser, with
tomcat, or with my servlet.

Adobe plugin version 5
IE version 5.5

Thanks,
Chris


ps. Here's my servlet.

package com.chessys.trecs;

import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.sql.*;

public class ReportManager extends HttpServlet {
  private static final String CONTENT_TYPE = "application/pdf";
  /**Initialize global variables*/
  public void init() throws ServletException {
  }
  /**Process the HTTP Get request*/
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    response.setContentType(CONTENT_TYPE);
    ServletOutputStream out = response.getOutputStream();

    Connection dbConnection = (Connection) request.getSession(
false ).getAttribute( "chesapeake_database_connection");

    try {
      Statement stmt = dbConnection.createStatement();

      ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("Select PDFImage from reportsinpdf
where reportid = " + request.getParameter("id"));

      if (rs.next()) {
        byte [] pdf = rs.getBytes(1);
        out.write(pdf);
        out.flush();
      }

    } catch (Exception e) {
      //Yeah i should probably do something here
    };

    out.close();
  }

  public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse
response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    doGet(request,response);
  }
  /**Clean up resources*/
  public void destroy() {
  }
}