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{span:style=font-size:2em;font-weight:bold} JAX-RS : Redirection {span}

{toc}

h1. With RequestDispatcherProvider

[RequestDispatcherProvider|http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/cxf/trunk/rt/frontend/jaxrs/src/main/java/org/apache/cxf/jaxrs/provider/RequestDispatcherProvider.java] is a JAXRS MessageBodyWriter which can redirect to JSP pages, named or default servlets. It can be used to serve all the responses from a given resource class or restricted to serving a limited set of classes only using a classResources map property. Note that this classResources property can also be used to specify the name of the key which JSP pages or other downstream servlets will use to access a response object.

At the moment, this provider is statically configured to support text/html content types, but it can be easily configured to support other content types if needed.  

Please see this [beans.xml|http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/cxf/trunk/systests/jaxrs/src/test/resources/jaxrs_dispatch/WEB-INF/beans.xml]. As you can see, it is possible to redirect to either to static resources such as book.html (possibly for providing some default response) or dynamic resources such as JSP pages. It is also possible to redirect to named servlets. 

Note that the only required property is a 'requestPath' one and its value should start with a forward slash but it does not have to point to an existing web application resource such as book.html; it can also have values like "/other/services/", possibly in a combination with a 'dispatcherName' property.

Finally, a servletContextPath property can be used to have some other ServletContext (as opposed to the current one) be used for RequestDispatcher look-ups. If set then the current ServletContext.getContext(servletContextPath) will be used to get the needed ServletContext.



h1. With CXFServlet

Please see the "Redirection" section on the [Servlet Transport|http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CXF20DOC/Servlet+Servlet Transport] page.

Note that both CXFServlet and JAXRS RequestDispatcherProvider can work together effectively on executing the redirection requests as described at that page.

If you have CXFServlet listening on "/" (thus effectively catching all the requests) and also would like to use RequestDispatcher, then make sure that a 'dispatcherName' property is also set, for example :
{code:xml}
<bean id="dispatchProvider" class="org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.provider.RequestDispatcherProvider">
    <property name="dispatcherName" value="jsp"/>
    <property name="resourcePath" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/test.jsp"/>
    <property name="scope" value="request"/>
</bean> 
{code}

If resources which are redirected to can be made public (i.e, moved out of /WEB-INF) then alternative option (instead of adding a 'dispatcherName' property to RequestDispatcherProvider and still have CXFServlet listening on '/') is to configure both RequestDispatcherProvider and CXFServlet to redirect to resources such as "/jsp/test.jsp".

h1. Custom Redirection

One can borrow some of the code from RequestDispatcherProvider and do the custom redirection from CXF in interceptors or custom invokers, if you will try to do it then you will also need to set an AbstractHTTPDestination.REQUEST_REDIRECTED property with a 'true' value on a current input message.