Is there a method to send a redirect that will not continue on with the rest of the page.

At the top of my jsp's I have an if check, to check for session existance, if not it redirects back to a login page. But every time this occurs I get null errors cause the page is still trying to continue accessing session variables, silly me thinking sendRedirect would actually redirect completely.

I could 'if block' the whole page, but that gets terribly annoying since I would like to have my connection check in a single include at the top of each page...

Yes, it does work.

But when watching the err output, there is null pointer exceptions popping up.(my session variables) Therefore, it leads me to believe that it has in fact redirected the page, but it still continues with the rest of the jsp code.

What I want is to not have to worry about that. I don't need my error logs filled up :)

<jsp:forward page="login.jsp"/> is only good if you are responding to a GET request - I get a HTTP 503 Not Implemented if I try it from a POST request, which is how I submit data to a database, since then you don't get all that URL junk.

The answer to the question that was asked, however, is simple. Since your JSP is just translated into a java class, you can include _any_ valid java code in it, including 'return;'. So do something like this:

if( some_condition() )
{
	response.sendRedirect( somelocation );
	return;
}

If you don't think of JSPs as being translated into servlets then you are bound to hit this sort of trouble eventually.

Regards,
Tom

Wow. I would have never though of that.

I complete belief that JSP was translated into a servlet, but since I didn't see the methods, didn't think about the return.

Nor would I have thought about the line between the browser and the server. sendRedirect is telling the browser to go somewhere, the return at first glance had me thinking, "Well, where the hell is that going to return to!?"

If you get a compiler error due to unreachable statements then that must be because you always redirect to another page. So why bother redirecting? Why not just go straight there?

If you really want to redirect always, then you need to have no statements after the return, and that means no HTML in you JSP after the return. Remember that a JSP does not have to be valid html, it just has to compile to a class that produces valid html.

Tom

Maybe it's a VisualAge / WebSphere thing. The
generated servlet code contains an "out.print"
statement after the return causing the compile error.
See example below...

JSP Code
--------

<%HttpSession sess = request.getSession(true);
  String owner = (String)sess.getAttribute("userName");

  if ( sess.getAttribute("userName") == null ) {%>
	<jsp:forward page="/login.jsp"/>
	<%return;%>
<%} else { %>
=== NORMAL PROCESSING
<%}%>

WebSphere generated servlet code extract
----------------------------------------
HttpSession sess = request.getSession(true);
String owner = (String)sess.getAttribute("userName");
                    
if ( sess.getAttribute("userName") == null ) {
out.print(new String(_jspx_html_data[4]));
out.clear();
_jspx_cleared_due_to_forward = true;
pageContext.forward("/login.jsp");
out.print(new String(_jspx_html_data[5]));
return;
out.print(new String(_jspx_html_data[6]));
} else {

Just to explain why the return didnt work in my code samples:-

CODE Example 1  (FAILS to Compile)
----------------------------------

<%if ( SecurityBean.updateUserSession() ) { %>
	<jsp:forward page="C:/display.jsp"/>
	<%return%>;
<%} else {
	session.setAttribute("UseridMessage", "XXX");
}%>

CODE Example 2  (Works OK)
--------------------------

<%if ( SecurityBean.updateUserSession() ) { %>
	<jsp:forward page="C:/display.jsp"/>
	<%return;
} else {
	session.setAttribute("UseridMessage", "XXX");
}%>