session.getAttribute() in JSP is giving null value

Answer 1

In order to get attributes from a session or a request, before doing that you must set/add it somewhere in your code (i.e. first set attributes, then you can get them).

So the short answer: in your case, instead of using getAttribute(String name) on session or request object, use request.getParameter(String name).

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What you're trying to accomplish here is retrieving parameters passed using HTML form. In order to do that use getParameter(String name) method, like:

String selectValue = request.getParameter("urlsel")

Traditionally values passed using HTTP form are retrieved in a servlet and then you can do whatever you need to do with them.

As I can see in your example, you are doing this PHP way. Although not the most common way in Java Web Application development, but you can retrieve parameters passed using HTML form in JSP from the param implicit object using Expression Language (you should avoid scriptlets in your JSP).

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Simple example

This is a simple example of a JSP page to showcase retrieving a parameter submitted using HTML form element in the same page (as in your example):

test.jsp

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>



    
    


    
Test Page
    

        
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