I’ve found some posts here and there about embedding a Vaadin app inside a JSP page, but I’m asking for the opposite: I’d like to know if it is possible to embed a full JSP-based webapp inside a Vaadin app and make it available through some path/url mapping. I need to integrate a report viewer, and I already embedded it inside a Vaadin window using a BrowserFrame calling to its own URL as a different Tomcat deployment but it cannot be outside my app because I need to share data between both applications, some of it being sensible in the form off login parameters and session parameters that cannot be shared through url parameters and neither should not be passed by post or similar “insecure” method.
In fact, the database is shared between my Vaadin app and the report viewer.
To clarify a bit, I just found a similar question in Stack Overflow (made by someone 6 years ago and, unfortunately, without a successful answer) with a similar requirement:
The report viewer should change its datasource dynamically, depending on the user who is logged in my Vaadin application. The report viewer has such feature, but it needs to be aware of the parameters of which datasource to use for filling data in its report. Report viewer can accept parameters from GET and POST, but of course I don’t want any database-related parameters in the calling URL. I’m trying to make my Vaadin app context parameters available in the viewer app, but without any success to this moment. And even if that could be possible, is not a recommended way.
If I could run the viewer (which is a full JSP-based app) inside a folder or so in my Vaadin app, it would be trivial to get there my session app which contain database-related data as user, etc.
Thanks for suggesting, Olli. I already thought of it, and maybe it could be an option in the future, but for the moment it’s a requierement not to use GET/POST :(.
I don’t think there’s a way you can serve the JSP page from the Vaadin application; I’d be happy to be proven wrong, of course. My current best idea is that you should save all relevant information to the DB, create a single-use token parameter with public-key crypto and fetch the data from the DB if the token evaluates correctly.
I get the picture, Olly. The problem here is that the database connection for both the data for the reports and for the Vaadin app is get via user-level authentication; I mean, each user is using his own database credentials. That would impose a new user-independent database connection for storing the tokens/parameters and, in the end, the database authentication credentials themselves… Sounds a bit overcomplicated to me or strange at least.
How would you do that? If you are familiar with Vaadin apps, you’ll already know that they have their own structure. My jsp app has its root index.jsp, well, in the app root directory. If you put it (and the rest of files) in the root Vaadin app directory, when you navigate to http://localhost/yourApp, Vaadin bootstraper, doing its “magic” (which I don’t have any interest in knowing how it works), takes care of everything and starts your app, no matter if you explicitly set http://localhost/yourApp/index.jsp in an attempt to start your JSP app instead – any appended path to the base one will be ignored and redirected to the index Vaadin app; haven’t you ever experienced that? I haven’t found a way to “run” a JSP by directly calling it if it’s placed inside a Vaddin app directory. If I’m missing something very obvious here please explain me, because my own experience and every reference to this problem I’ve found in the entire net points to being not possible. Not to say that is a very big mess placing the files of a JSP project in the same directory as a Vaadin one, which follow a totally different structure…
Hi,
the only way I know to serve jsp and a Vaadin on the same app is to not map Vaadin servlet /* but on a subpath (ie @WebServlet(urlPatterns = {“/ui/", "/VAADIN/”}, …); this way the jsp outside /ui/ and /VAADIN should be served by the default mappings of the servlet container.
If you can change this mapping you can maybe put the JSPs inside a WEB-INF subfolder and serve them with a custom servlet or filter forwarding the request to a RequestDispatcher.
Thanks for pointing me in the right way. Well, at one point I thought about messing with mappings but quickly abandoned the idea as I had not much idea about how to do it. I’m already reading about it here, although it’s a bit confusing:
This way now I can access my app with /app insted from the root path as I did previously (let’s say http://localhost/myApp/app/ instead of http://localhost/myApp). Anyway, I tried putting my JSP-app in its own directory insyde my Vaadin project (relative to its root) and cannot access it in any way. That is, pointing to http://localhost/myApp/viewer/ returns a 404.
So the part that I’m missing is the “you can maybe put the JSPs inside a WEB-INF subfolder” one. I tried also putting my JSPs in myApp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF, but of course that doesn’t make it visible, too. And if I navigate to http://localhost/, I see three directories available to navigate to (META-INF/, VAADIN/, WEB-INF/), but none of them has contents.
Not to say that the ideal approach would be to keep the root path for displaying my Vaadin app as always was (http://localhost) and to “isolate” one folder somewhere that could be accessed from a custom path.
I’m taking a look at the Spring Servlet sources to see if I can get something…
It’s weird that, after changing vaadin servlet url mapping, pointing directly to a jsp (not inside web-inf) gives you a 404.
It is also weird that WEB-INF folder is browsable.
What servlet container are you using? Is there perhaps a reverse proxy in front of the servlet container that does not map correctly?
Ok, directory navigation accross META-INF/, VAADIN/ and WEB-INF/ seems to be a matter of Jetty. I tried both with embedded Jetty that comes with Netbeans and with Tomcat. The later one doesn’t allow to navigate through those three directories.
Anyway, putting the JSP in the root folder of my Vaadin project doesn’t work - answer is a 404. The same result is got putting the folder inside src/main/webapp/WEB-INF or inside src/main/resources. No luck
I’m really surprised that it works for you – although I’m used to see my attemps fail several times before getting them working :/. I’ll try it again, although in fact I’m doing it again at this moment and it fails. This is my directory structure in disk:
c:\projects\my_project → this is where my Vaadin project is
|
– viewer → here is where the .jsp “servlet” is
|
– src (etc)
|
– target (etc)
|
pom.xml
So if I navigate to root (http://localhost:8080/), I get the fancy page you can see in the attachment.
If I navigate to http://localhost:8080/app (as I set up my mappings to work this way), my Vaadin app starts. That is the expected result.
Now I noticed that maybe it has something to do with the default served document. I have an index.jsp, but the output message differs a little depending if I call it without or with the /index.jsp. Without it, the error message is:
HTTP ERROR 404
Problem accessing /viewer/.
Reason:Not Found
Powered by Jetty:// 9.3.9.v20160517
When I try to access explicitly setting the /index.jsp part, it says:
HTTP ERROR 404
Problem accessing
/viewer/index.jsp.
Reason:/viewer/index.jsp
Powered by Jetty:// 9.3.9.v20160517
I’ll see if I find some logs to see if I can get something.
