I have experience programming Java Applications but never any Web Apps so xml is relatively new to me. I've learned quite a bit in my research but I'm currently stumped and hopefully you all can help me out.
Context: The company I work for hired a contractor to develop software for inventory. The developer chose to create a web app on the company's intranet (not connected to Internet at all). Several months and a handful of revisions down the road, the developer quit working on the project for unknown reasons (to me, at least). So here I am using a .war file to reverse engineer and then finish the project!
I've configured Tomcat and MS SQL Server and all connections are good according to Netbeans. I can deploy the app but here is where I get stuck. The index.jsp contains a login.jsp. Looking at the code for these pages has me confused.
As best I can tell, the developer was going for Form Based Authentication so that user roles are determined at login. I don't understand how this code redirects to any page at all, much less does anything:
<form method="POST" action='<%= response.encodeURL("j_security_check") %>' >
<table border="0" cellspacing="5">
<tr>
<td>
Username:<br>
<input type="text" name="j_username" style="width: 200px;">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
Password:<br>
<input type="password" name="j_password" style="width: 200px;">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><br></br><input type="submit" value="Log In" class="buttonStyle"> <input type="reset" class="buttonStyle"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
Specifically, what tells the app that a login is good or bad? What handles the events when the buttons are clicked?
I appreciate your patience and help!