Chaining a filter which intercepts a response.redirect()

Question

I have a filter that intercepts any URL with /pdf , the purpose of this filter is to stop users from viewing pdf files in /pdf folder directly.
I have a servlet that calls response.redirect ("/PDF/dir/file.pdf"); In the filter, I am determining if the referer is the application and if so i chain it to the next filter/servlet which in this case is a pdf file, or else i display an error.
The fiter is called appropriately but I am getting a file not found error, when it chains !!.
     public void doFilter(
          ServletRequest request,
          ServletResponse response,
          FilterChain chain)
          throws IOException, ServletException {
     System.out.println("Filter hit");
     if(((HttpServletRequest)request).getHeader("referer") == null)
     System.out.println("ErrorPage will be called");
     request.getRequestDispatcher("/Errorpage.jsp").forward(request,response);
     else
     System.out.println("Filter Redirecting to " + ((HttpServletRequest)request).getRequestURL().toString());
     chain.doFilter(request, response);
Am i missing something here.. Thank you for your reponse.
Vijay

Answer 1

Hello,
I tried to simulate your scenario. I am too getting
the same error, when referer is null and trying to
redirect to error page jsp.
But response.sendRedirect() worked vey well.
Regds
VJVishal,
My situation is opposite, i cannot do response.sendRedirect(). Where is your pdf located, is it under web-inf folder or under some external url?
Thanks,
Vijay