How can I forward to an external URL from within a DataAction?

Question

This is a very simple question I'd guess -- but what I thought was the obvious answer turned out not to be. Keep in mind I am using struts, and the URL is constructed dynamically, so I cannot place a struts forward action in the struts-config.xml file. Here is what I tried from within my DataAction's prepareModel() method:
actionContext.setActionForward(newURL);
actionContext.setRedirect(true);
This didn't work -- nothing happened. Anyone have any ideas?
Brad

Answer 1

In our application, we had a forward named Cancel, but for it to work properly we wanted a Redirect to occur to another page. The redirect was not working until we created a new actionforward and set th action forward to it as seen below. You can't programmatically change the forwards at runtime without error, from what I remember.
DataActionMapping mapping = ctx.getActionMapping();
ActionForward af = mapping.findForward("Cancel");
ActionForward afNew = new ActionForward();
afNew.setPath(ctx.getHttpServletRequest().getSession().getServletContext().getInitParameter("rootURL") + af.getPath());
afNew.setRedirect(true);
ctx.setActionForward(afNew);