Programming Customized Requests and Responses

There are many ways for a filter to modify a request or a response. For example, a filter can add an attribute to the request or can insert data in the response.

A filter that modifies a response must usually capture the response before it is returned to the client. To do this, you pass a stand-in stream to the servlet that generates the response. The stand-in stream prevents the servlet from closing the original response stream when it completes and allows the filter to modify the servlet’s response.

To pass this stand-in stream to the servlet, the filter creates a response wrapper that overrides the getWriter or getOutputStream method to return this stand-in stream. The wrapper is passed to the doFilter method of the filter chain. Wrapper methods default to calling through to the wrapped request or response object.

To override request methods, you wrap the request in an object that extends either ServletRequestWrapper or HttpServletRequestWrapper. To override response methods, you wrap the response in an object that extends either ServletResponseWrapper or HttpServletResponseWrapper.