resetting a HttpRequest after calling request.getReader()

Question

Is there a way to call the getReader() method on a HttpRequest and then \"reset\" the request so other calls to getReader() will not t

Answer 1

Like other people have said, No I don't think there is a way to reset the request.

I have been in the same situation of wanting to log the content of the request in a ServletFilter before moving on. Here is a forum post that helped me figure out how to create a HttpServletRequestWrapper like Stephen C was talking about. That will store the data so you can call getReader() and getInputStream() multiple times.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

import javax.servlet.ServletInputStream;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequestWrapper;

public class MyRequestWrapper extends HttpServletRequestWrapper {

    private HttpServletRequest original;
    private byte[] reqBytes;
    private boolean firstTime = true;

    public MyRequestWrapper(HttpServletRequest request) {
        super(request);
        original = request;
    }

    @Override
    public BufferedReader getReader() throws IOException{

        if(firstTime)
            firstTime();

        InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(new ByteArrayInputStream(reqBytes));
        return new BufferedReader(isr);
    }

    @Override
    public ServletInputStream getInputStream() throws IOException {

        if(firstTime)
            firstTime();

        ServletInputStream sis = new ServletInputStream() {
            private int i;

            @Override
            public int read() throws IOException {
                byte b;
                if(reqBytes.length > i)
                    b = reqBytes[i++];
                else
                    b = -1;

                return b;
            }
        };

        return sis;
    }

    private void firstTime() throws IOException{
        firstTime = false;
        StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer();
        BufferedReader reader = original.getReader();
        String line;
        while((line = reader.readLine()) != null){
            buffer.append(line);
        }
        reqBytes = buffer.toString().getBytes();
    }
}