8.3 Creating HTTP Headers

An rwsf::HttpServletResponse contains a collection of headers that the servlet container uses for the response to the client. The response provides the function setHeader() for adding free-form text headers, the function setDateHeader() for creating headers that contain a date, and the function setIntHeader() for creating headers that contain a number. The response also provides named accessors for the Content-Type and Content-Length headers.

The servlet container does not include a Content-Type header by default. A response must set the Content-Type to the MIME type of the content in the payload.

The following code uses a named accessor to set the Content-Type of a response to text/xml:

response.setContentType("text/xml");

The code sample below adds a nonstandard HTTP header to a response:

response.setHeader("X-Servlet-Name", "myServlet");

The response provides a setDateHeader function for creating a header from an rwsf::DateTime object. The code sample below uses the setDateHeader() function to create an Expires HTTP header with a time two days from the present. The sample below creates an rwsf::DateTime with the current time, adds 48 hours to the time, converts the time to HTTP date format, then adds the header to the request:

rwsf::DateTime expires(rwsf::DateTime::setCurrentTime);
expires.incrementHour(48);

response.setDateHeader("Expires", expires);

The response also provides a setIntHeader function for creating a header from an int.

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