Tutorials : Server-Side Web Applications Using Servlets and JSP :
Reading HTTP Request Headers :

Contents
An Overview of Request Headers
Reading Request Headers from Servlets
Example: Printing all Headers

2. Reading Request Headers from Servlets

Reading headers is very straightforward; just call the getHeader method of the HttpServletRequest, which returns a String if the header was supplied on this request, null otherwise. However, there are a couple of headers that are so commonly used that they have special access methods. The getCookies method returns the contents of the Cookie header, parsed and stored in an array of Cookie objects. See the separate section of this tutorial on cookies. The getAuthType and getRemoteUser methods break the Authorization header into its component pieces. The getDateHeader and getIntHeader methods read the specified header and then convert them to Date and int values, respectively.

Rather than looking up one particular header, you can use the getHeaderNames to get an Enumeration of all header names received on this particular request.

Finally, in addition to looking up the request headers, you can get information on the main request line itself. The getMethod method returns the main request method (normally GET or POST, but things like HEAD, PUT, and DELETE are possible). The getRequestURI method returns the URI (the part of the URL that came after the host and port, but before the form data). The getRequestProtocol returns the third part of the request line, which is generally "HTTP/1.0" or "HTTP/1.1".

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This tutorial is now available as a book: Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages by Marty Hall, published by Sun Microsystems Press. Read all about it at CoreServlets.com


Server-Side Web Applications using Java Servlets versions 2.1/2.2 and JavaServer Pages (JSP) version 1.0: A Tutorial
© 1999-2000 Marty Hall.
All source code freely available for unrestricted use.
Created for work in the Research and Technology Development Center of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, for courses in the Johns Hopkins Part-Time MS Program in Computer Science, and for various industry seminars and on-site Java short courses.
Please note that this is a first draft of the tutorial, so please send corrections, comments, and suggestions to me at hall@apl.jhu.edu.
Reprinted with permission from the author. Click here to visit the original version

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