Post without using a form.

Question

Hello,
The below HTML would post the form data to the made up address:
"http://www.something.com/index.php" when the the user clicks the submit button that says "Log in". Assume that the above address is on another server.
<form method="post" action="http://www.something.com/index.php">
<input type="text" name="user" value="" size="10" maxlength="10" />
<input type="password" name="pass" value="" size="10" maxlength="10" />
<input type="submit" name="button" value="Log in" />
</form>
But if my JSP already knows the form data (usersname and password), how can my JSP post the info to another website e.g. "http://www.something.com/index.php" without having to bring up a form. Is there some code that I can just use to do post without using a form?
Cheers,
Lloyd.

Answer 1

forward forwards to the page, which has to be a JSP or servlet in the same server. It's internal to the server, the browser will have no idea it's happening.
URLConnection supports POST. There are examples around the forums. Yes, you'd have to parse the responding HTML to know what happened.
URLConnection urlConn = new URL("...").openConnection();
if(urlConn instanceof HttpURLConnection) {
     HttpURLConnection httpConn = (HttpURLConnection)urlConn;
     httpConn.setRequestMethod("POST");
urlConn.setDoInput(true);
urlConn.setDoOutput(true);
urlConn.setUseCaches(false);
urlConn.setDefaultUseCaches(false);
PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(urlConn.getOutputStream(), "UTF-8"));
out.println("name=value&name=value&...");
out.flush();
out.close();
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(urlConn.getInputStream(), "UTF-8"));
// read from in.