Question

*//post method*
protected void doPost (HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res)
        throws ServletException,IOException {
        String username = req.getParameter("username");
        String password = req.getParameter("password"); 
        System.out.println( " Form data recieved .. Now Verifying ");

        if ( loginVerificator ( username, password ) )  {
            Cookie xO = new Cookie ( "username", username );
            Cookie xT = new Cookie ( "password", password );            
            res.addCookie( xO );
            res.addCookie( xT );
            res.setContentType( "text/html" );
            PrintWriter out = res.getWriter( );
            out.println("<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"2\";url=\"home\">");
        }

The post method retrieves the form parameters and then creates cookies from them and adds those cookies to the response. Then it redirects the page with meta tag.

I want to know why this page is reloading instead of redirecting. I am not able to find where I am making a mistake.

Answer 1

out.println("<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"2\";url=\"home\">");

writes a meta tag in the response with the following value:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2";url="home"> which is incorrect, as the url is not wrapped by the quotes for the content attribute value. Instead the tag should have been generated as:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2;url=home"> which requires the corresponding line in the servlet to be:

out.println("<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"2;url=home\">");

---

Note that the meta refresh concept has been deprecated by W3C. If you intend to redirect the user to a new page, it is always preferable to use a HTTP 302 response, which is easily doable in Servlets using the HttpServletResponse.sendRedirect(location) method.