Read the output of a jsp into a string

Question

I need a servlet that can return the output html of a jsp as a string. How can I do this? I played around with constructing a URL object and getting an InputStream from that but without success.

Answer 1

This is kind of a weird hack, but it just might work. If it's only one jsp file that you're working with, instead of putting the code inside a jsp, put it in a servlet instead. Wherever you're outputting something call the method below:
private String totalOutput="";
private void doubleOutput(PrintWriter jspout, PrintWriter fileout, String mytext){
   jspout.println(mytext);
   fileout.println(mytext);
   totalOutput+=mytext;
}So basically you would get the jspout from the response.getWriter() method (in either doGet or doPost method). The fileout is basically a PrintWriter associated with a new FileOutputStream(tempfilename).
Now, you basically have all the output you need in the file and you can access it later. Alternatively, at the end of the servlet's doGet or doPost method, you'll have access to everything that's output in that 'totalOutput' String (don't forget to reset it after every call to doGet/doPost!)