Question

I have a

Enter URL: <input type = "text" name= "aURL"/>

in my form and I want in JSP to become a clickable URL.

I tried with:

<% String aURL = request.getParameter("activityURL"); %>

<a href = "<%= aURL %>" ></a>

Answer 1

Your link has no body (i.e. there’s nothing between <a> and </a>), so nothing will visually appear as a clickable link. You need to give the link a body so that the enduser has something visible to click on.

E.g. the text “click here”:

<a href="<%= aURL %>">click here</a>

or just the URL itself:

<a href="<%= aURL %>"><%= aURL %></a>

See also:

• HTML Beginner Tutorial – Links

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Unrelated to the concrete problem: you’ve there a huge XSS attack hole with inlining user-controlled input unescaped among the HTML source code. This is pretty dangerous if your website has a sensitive backend and/or when there are sessions involved. Start learning JSTL/EL and discover the fn:escapeXml() function to make it XSS attack safe.

<a href="${fn:escapeXml(param.aURL)}">click here</a>