404 error on valid URL from Servlet - java

I have a project due (actually overdo) for school and cannot get something simple working.
I am running Netbeans 7.2.1, Glassfish 3.1.2.2 and the latest Java JDK.
I have four JSF pages, index.xhtml ItemAdd.xhtml, ItemCatalog.xhtml, and ItemDetail.xhtml and a servlet SessionServlet. I have verified that I can directly reach each of the pages i.e
http://localhost:8080/CMIS440Spitzer-Project2/faces/ItemDetail.xhtml
works. However when I go from one of the JSF pages to my servlet and then forward the request on I get a glassfish 404 error.
Here is my extremely simple servlet code that is doing the forwarding:
if (request.getParameter("target").contains("Add Item")) {
String URL = request.getContextPath() + "/faces/ItemAdd.xhtml";
System.out.print(URL);
RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request.getRequestDispatcher(URL);
dispatcher.forward(request, response);
}
One the console I get the following which I can paste into my browser and it works:
INFO: /CMIS440Spitzer-Project2/faces/ItemAdd.xhtml
Since I get the console message I know the request is reaching the servlet and that it is hitting the right code block and because I get a Glassfish 404 error I know it is forwarding to my machine on the correct port.
What is the issue with the RequestDispatcher? Why is this not working?
Thanks.
<rant>
This encompases more then this issue but I have worked with PHP, perl, C++, C, Java and a few others. NEVER before have I felt that a language (in this case the JSF implementation of Java) was actively trying to make my life as difficult as possible. For example, many needed things in this environment is in the form of maps:
Need a list of all request parameters, you get a map, need a list of all session parameters, you get a map, etc. However in JSF you cannot easily LOOP THROUGH MAPS! Why, because it is slow. I found a link that was basically a Mea Culpa from a Java developer who mentioned it would be O(N) speed so it would be slow. In other word the Java JSF developers pre-optimized my code and require me to convert maps to lists.
At one point in this I was getting some weird error regarding reflection and accessing private methods/properties when now-where in my code was I doing anything of the kind. I was using standard getters/setters to return a map keyset.
Dont even get me started on the naming conventions of getters/setters (uppercase converted to lowercase, add a get/set in front)
Maybe its me but this whole setup seems overly obtuse,hard to understand and unnecessarily complicated.
Thanks for reading my rant. I have been at this WAY longer then I thought I should and have been nearly to tears trying to do simple stuff.
</rant>

Why are you mixing servlets for session management and JSF pages? when working with JSF, you have to stop thinking in terms of the http request/response paradigm, it's an event-driven framework with more in common to desktop GUI programming. Granted, JSF is not the friendliest web framework to work with, but you're making it more complicated than it needs to be.

The path you pass to getRequestDispatcher is relative to the context root.
By adding the context path to it, you're ending up with /CMIS440Spitzer-Project2/CMIS440Spitzer-Project2/faces/ItemAdd.xhtml, which doesn't exist.
(Actually, it's relative to the context root if it starts with a slash, as this one does. If it doesn't start with a slash it's relative to the servlet.)

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You can simplify the configuration by mapping the urlrewrite filter to all URLs, but then you lose a bit of performance on all the URLs that aren't ultimately rewritten.

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Developing a webapp in Java, I had to describe all mappings in web.xml. In Compojure, I see, I must describe routes. So, can I bind the Java servlet to one such route?
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So my first questions is, what is the best solution here?
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If I stick with one GWT module, I need to keep the page information stored on server side. Naturally I thought about sessions, but I'm not sure if its a good idea to mix page information with user data. A session usually lives between user login and logout, but in this case it would need different behavior. Would it be bad practise to handle this via sessions?
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I'd go with History tokens. It's the standard way of handling such situations. I don't understand though, what you mean by "It is hard to produce a human friendly URL with history tokens" - they seem pretty human friendly to me :) And if you use servlets for handling urls, I think that would cause the whole page to be reloaded - something which I think you'd rather want to avoid.
Second, I'm using gwt-presenter and
this approach would mean that we need
to support subplaces in one token,
which I'd rather avoid.
If you are not satisfied with gwt-presenter (like I was :)), roll out your own classes to help with MVP - it's really easy (you can start from scratch or modify the gwt-presenter classes) and you'll get a solution suited to your needs. I did precisely that, because gwt-presenter seemed to "complicated"/complex to me - to generic, when all I needed was a subset of what it offered (or try to offer).
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Based on what you have posted I presume you come from building websites using a server side framework: JSP, JSF, Wicket, PHP or similar. GWT is not the solution for building page-based navigational websites, like you would with the aforementioned frameworks. With GWT, you load a webapp in the browser and stay there. Handle user events, talk with the server and update widgets; using gwt-presenter is a good thing here as you are forced to think about separation of controller logic and view state.
You can really exploit all features of GWT to build a high-performance app-in-the-browser, but it is definately not meant for building websites (using hyperlinked pages that transfer request parameters via the server session).
This is by far the most widely asked question about GWT here # StackOverflow :)
"How do I define pages and navigation between them in GWT?" Short answer: "You don't."
Use Wicket instead, it runs on the App Engine just fine and enables you to define page bookmarks and all stuff you mentioned above. Look here: http://stronglytypedblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/wicket-on-google-app-engine.html

Execute JSP directly from Java

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I need something as:
Class compiledJSP = compileJSP(new File("helloWorld.jsp"));
String html = executeJSP(compiledJSP, httpServletRequest, httpServletResponse, ...);
html --> "Hello World, John!"
Thanks!
If you need to capture JSP's output as string it's reasonably straightforward (although far from ideal from the design point of view) from within Servlet Container:
1. Extend javax.servlet.HttpServletResponseWrapper and override getWriter() / getOutputStream() methods to provide your own buffered versions (e.g. StringWriter)
2. Invoke "include()" method of RequestDisparcher, wrapping original response in your own.
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Nevertheless, if it's an absolute hard requirement your most straightforward options are:
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2. Same as above, but you can run embedded Servlet Container (e.g. Jetty).
If your JSPs are available at build-time you can precompile them via Jasper as suggested in other answers.
I would strongly advice against trying to implement your own servlet container - you'll be walking into a world of hurt.
You will need a container. A JSP is an abstraction on Servlet. Servlets have a dependency on a life cycle provided by a container.You need a container to provide the life cycle.
This is possible without a servlet container. There are two steps to it.
The first is to generate the source code. If you look at the source code of the jspc ant task it is possible to do it directly in code. Or you could just invoke the ant task.
The code that is generated is just a Servlet and it is possible to invoke the methods on a servlet outside of a container:
Just instantiate it and then call doGet(request, response). I'm not sure exactly what you need this for but your life will be made easier using spring mock objects for the http request and response.
This will populate the Response object. you can then get the output with:
res.getContentAsString();
See an example here:
http://ytreyvus.blogspot.com/2007/03/private-void-cloneplaneffectrelationshi.html
Try MockRunner to execute it. You'll need to compile the JSP first, though. I'm using Maven 2 for this (and the JSP Compiler plugin)

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