Question

I need to get hold of the request object in Java code. I can’t pass this object down to my code for certain reasons. Is there any way I can say something like: getCurrentHTTPServletRequest?

It is safe for me to assume that I am in a Servlet Context.

Answer 1

Well you should pass it down if you need it. Anything else you do is going to be ugly, basically.

You could use a ThreadLocal variable – basically set the context for that particular thread when you get the request, and then fetch it later on. That will work so long as you only need to get at the request within the thread that’s processing it – and so long as you don’t do any funky asynchronous request handling. It’s brittle though, for precisely those reasons.

However, I would strongly advise you to be explicit about your dependencies instead. Either pass the servlet request down, or just the bits that you need.