How to get host name with port from a http or https request

kumar picture kumar · Oct 25, 2013 · Viewed 116.6k times · Source

I have two applications deployed in jboss container(same unix box). If i get a request from app1, i need to frame a corresponding request for app2.

eg:
if app1 request is: http://example.com/context?param1=123
then I need to extract "http://example.com/", so that I can frame request for second app.

I tried using:

  HttpServletRequest.getServerName() & 
  HttpServletRequest.getServerPort() & \
  HttpServletRequest.getHeader("host") 

methods, but the request may be of http or https.

Please let me know if there is any other better way. Thanks!

Answer

David Levesque picture David Levesque · Oct 25, 2013

You can use HttpServletRequest.getScheme() to retrieve either "http" or "https".

Using it along with HttpServletRequest.getServerName() should be enough to rebuild the portion of the URL you need.

You don't need to explicitly put the port in the URL if you're using the standard ones (80 for http and 443 for https).

Edit: If your servlet container is behind a reverse proxy or load balancer that terminates the SSL, it's a bit trickier because the requests are forwarded to the servlet container as plain http. You have a few options:

1) Use HttpServletRequest.getHeader("x-forwarded-proto") instead; this only works if your load balancer sets the header correctly (Apache should afaik).

2) Configure a RemoteIpValve in JBoss/Tomcat that will make getScheme() work as expected. Again, this will only work if the load balancer sets the correct headers.

3) If the above don't work, you could configure two different connectors in Tomcat/JBoss, one for http and one for https, as described in this article.