Question

In the server side code, I am writing a string (which gets written on a browser page) using OutputStreamWriter. This gets written in a new window. I need to be able to write this in the same window.

The class extends HttpServlet and following is the structure of the code:

void foo(HttpServletResponse response...) {
...
    OutputStreamWriter out = new OutputStreamWriter(response.getOutputStream());
    response.reset();
    response.setContentType("text/html");
    out.write("Hello World!"); // Or some html string
    out.flush();  
    out.close();
}    

Answer 1

The server side (the servlet) don’t and can’t open a new window (fortunately, otherwise spamming the client with popups would be tremendously easy…). The client (the browser) is the only who can open a new window. Most likely you’ve used one of the following constructs in HTML or JavaScript which will show the result in a new window:

<form action="servleturl" target="_blank">

or

<a href="servleturl" target="_blank">

or

<script>window.open('servleturl', 'windowname');</script>

You need to remove the target="_blank" to get the response in the current window, or in case you’re using JavaScript, to use window.location = 'servleturl'; instead.

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Unrelated to the concrete question, emitting HTML in a servlet is a poor practice. Use JSP instead.

See also:

• Our servlets wiki page
• Our JSP wiki page