Hello all,
Referencing a Servlet input stream - by calling ServletRequest.getInputStream(), which propagates down to CoyoteRequest.getInputStream() - in Tomcat 4/5 stops POST'ed body parameters from being parsed. See "usingInputStream" instance member declared at CoyoteRequest:200 and referenced/modified at CoyoteRequest:824 and CoyoteRequest:1922 (in the nightly snapshot 20040726).
I have not raised this as a bug as the Servlet Spec. and JavaDocs leaves a window open for interpretation. Java doc for method ServletRequest.getParameter(String) says:
[...]
If the parameter data was sent in the request body, such as occurs with an HTTP POST request, then reading the body directly via getInputStream() or getReader() can interfere with the execution of this method. [...]
And the Servlet 2.3 Spec. SRV 4.1.1 also fails to nail it down.
However, the current implementation in Tomcat 4/5 has serious and in circumstances hard-to-find side effects. (And conflicts with Tomcat 3, Caucho's Resin, Jetty and so on).
In our case, a complex application runtime needed to hide Servlet details behind an abstraction layer and thus referencing the input stream ahead of use without knowing if any subsystem would later require it. This referencing was done before getting any parameters, with the side effect that POST'ed parameters disappeared. And what resulted was a very non-trivial bug. It became even harder when the addition of a request dumper valve when debugging had the apparent side effect of solving the problem (as then the parameters are referenced before the input stream) thus indicating that this was a Tomcat bug and not an application bug, as you do not expect a component added outside the Servlet web application to have such a side effect. All in all, approx. 6 hours of debugging followed.
Perhaps the setting of the CoyoteRequest.usingInpuStream member should be delayed until actual reading of the stream and not only referencing.
If you'd rather have me post this directly as a bug, I'd of course be happy to.
Regards - Lars J. Nilsson
================ Senior Developer RecipeXperience Ltd.
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