How to read a HTTP header using JSP?

Following is the example which uses getHeaderNames() method of HttpServletRequest to read the HTTP header information. This method returns an Enumeration that contains the header information associated with the current HTTP request.

Once we have an Enumeration, we can loop down the Enumeration in the standard manner. We will use the hasMoreElements() method to determine when to stop and the nextElement() method to get the name of each parameter name.

<%@ page import = "java.io.*,java.util.*" %>

<html>
   <head>
      <title>HTTP Header Request Example</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <center>
         <h2>HTTP Header Request Example</h2>
         <table width = "100%" border = "1" align = "center">
            <tr bgcolor = "#949494">
               <th>Header Name</th>
               <th>Header Value(s)</th>
            </tr>
            <%
               Enumeration headerNames = request.getHeaderNames();
               while(headerNames.hasMoreElements()) {
                  String paramName = (String)headerNames.nextElement();
                  out.print("<tr><td>" + paramName + "</td>\n");
                  String paramValue = request.getHeader(paramName);
                  out.println("<td> " + paramValue + "</td></tr>\n");
               }
            %>
         </table>
      </center>
   </body>
</html>

Let us now put the above code in main.jsp and try to access it.

HTTP Header Request Example

Header Name	Header Value(s)
accept	/
accept-language	en-us
user-agent	Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.2; MS-RTC LM 8)
accept-encoding	gzip, deflate
host	localhost:8080
connection	Keep-Alive
cache-control	no-cache