how to display a PDF through an xhtml

Question

I'm trying to display a PDF report on a webApp, I've been following this tutorial here and it creates the pdf file fine, but I'm having trouble trying to display it in the browser. In my xhtml I have a button, once that button is clicked, a function calling the servlet is called. it goes into the servlet and created a pdf document fine. but I can't seem to figure out how to display it on the screen. is there a way to show the document on a new browser window, or new tab? or even the same one.

I'm working with Java Server faces 2.0 in Eclipse. and have a Tomcat 7.0 server.

on my webxml I added the following code specified in the example:

 <servlet>
    <servlet-name>PdfServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.bravo.servlets.PdfServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>    
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>PdfServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/PdfServlet</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

and my servlet looks like this ( pretty much the same as the example):

@WebServlet("/PdfServlet")
public class PdfServlet extends HttpServlet {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
private Font font = new Font(Font.FontFamily.TIMES_ROMAN, 12,
        Font.NORMAL, BaseColor.RED);



/**
 * Default constructor. 
 */
public PdfServlet() {
    // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
}

/**
 * @see HttpServlet#doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
 */
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    doPost(request, response);
}

/**
 * @see HttpServlet#doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
 */
protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    invokePDFViewer(response);
    Document document = new Document();

    try{
            PdfWriter.getInstance(document, response.getOutputStream()); 
        document.open();

        addContent(document);

        document.close(); 
    }catch(DocumentException e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

}

private void invokePDFViewer(HttpServletResponse response){
    response.setContentType("application/pdf"); 
}

private void addContent(Document document)throws DocumentException {
    PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(2);


    Paragraph paragraph = new Paragraph ("Este es un parrafo en celda 1", font);



    table.addCell(paragraph);
    table.addCell("2");
    table.addCell("3");
    table.addCell("4");
    table.addCell("5");
    table.addCell("6");     

    document.add(table);
}

}

the xhtml I'm calling the servlet from looks like this:

....
function callPdfServlet(){

            $.ajax({
                type:   'POST',
                cache:  'false',
                data:   'codeType=notUsed',
                url:    '/miloWeb/PdfServlet',
                async:  false,
                success: function(data){    
                },
                error: function (xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError){
                    alert(ajaxOptions);
                }   
            });

        }

.....
<h:commandButton id="reportButton" action=" " styleClass="button" value="get Report" onclick="callPdfServlet();"></h:commandButton>

So at the end, all it does right now is I go into the xhtml in my browser, click on the button, and it hits the servlet, goes through the code, and then thats it. my browser just reloads the screen and nothing else happens. so i need to show the pdf I just created. Thanks in advance for your help!

//************************************************************************************ EDIT 01/02/12:

after reading this and this

I can see that the action in the commandButton will take me to the "response".xhtml with "response" being a string that I either hardcode in, or is returned by an action in a Managed Bean. that response ( if not put in my faces-config file ) will take me to the page IF it's in the same folder as my current page.

so I believe that when I put "miloWeb/PdfServlet" as a response for the action, It looks for the page in the same folder ( which it's not) and since it doesn't find anything just reloads the page. And since I have a break point In the servlet, I am 100% sure it's not hitting it.

so my question is: How do I redirect my page to miloWeb/PdfServlet?? to clarify, it works fine if I put the name of another xhtml in the same folder. so it is working that way.

//This is what I tried just for reference: Instead of going through the ajax call I've changed the button to

<h:commandButton id="reportButton" action="/miloWeb/PdfServlet" styleClass="button" value="get Report"></h:commandButton>

but it Just reloads the page and doesn't take me to the Servlet.

so another thing I tried was tried to go thought the action of the button calling a Managed Bean:

    public String actionPdf(){
    return "/miloWeb/PdfServlet";
}

again,same thing, the function returns the string, but it still doesn't take me to the servlet.

Answer 1

in the action of the commandButton, I had to type this in:

public String doThis(){   
String url = "url of your servlet";   
 FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();   
 try {   
  context.getExternalContext().dispatch(url);   
  }catch (Exception e) {   
       e.printStackTrace();   
}   
finally{   
   context.responseComplete();

return "";   
   } 

So with this, I get the context root and redirect it there. url being /PdfServlet

Answer 2

Just post a regular form rather than posting in AJAX, and the browser will load the response from your PDF servlet in the page rather than loading it from JavaScript and ignoring it completely:

<form method="post" action="/miloWeb/PdfServlet">
    <input type="hidden" name="codeTyped" value="notUsed"/>
    <input type="submit" value="Show PDF"/>
</form>